Thaindian News

By Meena Kar
Jan 3, (THAINDIAN NEWS) An earthquake of magnitude 7.2 on the Richter scale shook southern Chile on Sunday, prompting some thousands of people to flee the coast in search of higher ground with the fear that the quake could generate a tsunami, like the one which destroyed the area last year.

There were no immediate reports of major damage or casualties. Vicente Nunez, the head of the National Emergency Office, said that no tsunami alert was issued. The US Geological Survey reported that the earthquake occurred sometime around 20:20 GMT on Sunday. The epicenter was at a depth of 16 kilometers, 69 km northwest of Temuco, in Chile’s Araucania region. The latest US Geological Survey report gave a revised version of the previous one with the magnitude of the quake to be 7.2 and originating 33 kilometers under the ground. It described the location as offshore from the actual region where it originally originated. The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center said in a bulletin that on the basis of all available data, any destructive Pacific-wide tsunami is not expected. the Center also reported that based on historical earthquake and tsunami data, there is no destructive widespread tsunami threat existing. Nevertheless, earthquakes of such magnitude at times generate local tsunamis along the coasts located with 100 kilometers from the epicenter. These tsunamis were equally destructive if not more.

As the first quake struck, people living in several coastal cities fled the place as fast as they could, leaving behind some shopping centers. A few mobile-phone communications got destroyed in the Araucania region 370 miles south-west of the capital, Santiago. This earthquake came as a terrible shock to people of the place. Residents of that region have fresh memories of the 8.8 magnitude quake and consequent tsunami in February 2010 which took the lives of at least 521 people.