A large offshore earthquake struck central Chile on Wednesday, swaying buildings in its capital city, killing at least three people, and causing the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center to say that dangerous waves were possible late Wednesday night.
The earthquake had a magnitude of 8.3, according to the U.S. Geological Survey, creating conditions for a dangerous tsunami and produced some waves and coastal flooding though Chile started lifting some tsunami warnings around midnight.
“Based on the preliminary earthquake parameters … widespread hazardous tsunami waves are possible,” the Warning Center said in a bulletin on the quake centered about 141 miles north-northwest of Santiago.
In a Wednesday evening address to the nation, Chilean President Michelle Bachelet said three people had been killed, though she gave no details.
Chilean relief officials were still checking late into the night, but there were no reports of the sort of catastrophic damage that 8.3-magnitude earthquakes can cause and with which Chileans are familiar.
“Once again we must confront a powerful blow from nature,” Mrs. Bachelet said in her address, in which she urged people to stay on higher ground until authorities could do a more-thorough evaluation when day breaks Thursday.
Late Wednesday, authorities lifted the tsunami warning for Chile’s far southern regions. The warnings remained in effect everywhere else, and authorities said school classes would be canceled in most of the country Thursday.
Jorge Medina, a Santiago resident, told The Associated Press that he was in an aerobics class when “people started screaming that everything was shaking.”
Power and communications were knocked out throughout central Chile and Santiago’s main airport was closed as a precaution.
Government officials ordered evacuations of low-lying areas along the 2,400 miles of the skinny nation’s Pacific coast and, according to reporters in Chile, cars were streaming inland to higher ground. The quake was reportedly felt on the other side of South America, in Argentina’s capital of Buenos Aires.
Mayor Denis Cortes of Illapel said one woman had been killed in his city north of Santiago, but he provided no other details to a local television station.
U.S. officials posted a tsunami alert for Hawaii, though geographic distance would make catastrophic effects there even less likely than in Chile. U.S. officials pinpointed 3 a.m. Thursday as the likely high point in Hawaii.
Chile is one of the world’s most earthquake-vulnerable countries, straddling the Andes Mountains and sitting on and near numerous fault lines where the Nazca and South American plates rub against one another.
The most powerful earthquake in recorded history — the 9.5 magnitude Valdivia earthquake — hit Chile in 1960 and killed up to 6,000 people. More recently, a 2010 offshore earthquake near Concepcion reached 8.8 magnitude and killed more than 500 people even in a more prosperous society with stronger building codes than were possible in 1960.
• Victor Morton can be reached at vmorton@washingtontimes.com.
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