A magnitude 7.5 earthquake shook northern Peru early Sunday (local time), injuring more than a dozen people and causing extensive damage; however, no deaths have been reported so far, according to Peruvian authorities.
The very strong seismic tremor was recorded yesterday at 05:52 (at 12:52 Greek time) and became more felt in areas of the jungle and the central coastal provinces of the country, said the Peruvian National Institute of Geophysics.
The epicenter was located 98 kilometers east of Santa Maria de Nieva, the capital of the province of Kontorkanki, in the prefecture of Amazonas, 860 km northeast of the capital Lima, near the border with Ecuador; the focal depth was 131 km, according to .
Santa Maria de Nieva is located in a sparsely populated area, where mostly indigenous people live, on the banks of the Nieva River.
According to the National Institute for Civil Protection (INDECI), the quake so far has left at least “twelve injured”, while “75 houses were destroyed” and some 362 buildings have been “damaged”, including seven health structures and 13 churches. Roads and power lines were also damaged, according to local media.
The quake also damaged infrastructure in at least two neighboring Ecuadorian provinces, said the country’s president, Guillermo Lasso.
In Peru, the quake affected almost half of the country.
In Lima, more than 1,000 kilometers south of the epicenter, people took to the streets in some neighborhoods. The city of 10 million people had already been shaken earlier in the morning by another earthquake, 5.2 magnitude.
“We all took to the streets, we were very scared,” Lucia, from the town of Chota in the Cajamarca region, where Peruvian President Pedro Castillo hails from, told RPP radio.
“The tremor was huge,” Hector Rekeho, the mayor of Santa Maria de Nieva, which has a population of about 2,500, told RPP. It was said that some houses made of dried mud and wood collapsed. In the area of ​​La Halka, also in Amazonas, the bell tower – 14 meters high – of a church built during the colonial period collapsed.
Power outages were reported in several affected areas, while sections of the road network in them were closed due to falling rocks.
President Castillo said on Twitter that he had ordered support for the affected areas with additional staff from the state apparatus and that he had inspected the situation with a military plane that flew over the area. “We will support the earthquake victims and repair the material damage,” he assured.
At least 400 aftershocks are recorded in Peru each year, as the country is located on the so-called ring of fire of the Pacific Ocean, a zone of intense volcanic and seismic activity.
On August 15, 2007, a magnitude 7.9 earthquake centered in the central Peruvian coast struck the city of Pisco, a major port, killing 595 people.
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