An earthquake of magnitude 7.4 recorded off Chile and Argentina, a tsunami alert briefly triggered

“We call to evacuate the seaside throughout the Magallanes region,” the Chilean president asked on Friday.

More fear than harm. A powerful earthquake at sea that occurred in southern Chile and Argentina, Friday May 2, sparked a brief alert in the tsunami and a population evacuation order in the coastal zone. The Chilean seismological center assessed the earthquake to a magnitude of 7.5, while the American Institute of Geophysics (USGS) measured a magnitude of 7.4.

Registered 10 km deep and 218 km south of the Chilean town of Puerto Williams, the most southern city in the world, the earthquake gave rise to a call to evacuate, which was lifted two hours later. “Preventive evacuation is over. In other words, everyone resumes its activities. All sectors should operate normally, with the exception of all economic activities on the coast”said the Chilean authorities. Waves of less than a meter were expected on the ribs of the Antarctic Peninsula.

In Argentina, a neighboring country, the authorities of the province of Terre de Feu called the hundred inhabitants of the small town of Puerto Almanza to evacuate “Preventively” and at “Go to high and safe places” For a few hours. In the city of Ushuaia, “Only aquatic activities have been suspended”.

Chile is one of the countries that have recorded the most earthquakes in the world. On its territory converge three tectonic plates: the Nazca plate, the South American plate and the Antarctic plate. In 1960, the city of Valdivia was devastated by an earthquake of magnitude 9.5, considered to be the most powerful ever recorded, which killed 9,500 people. In 2010, an 8.8 magnitude earthquake, followed by a tsunami, caused more than 520 dead.