What happened?The massive earthquake that rocked the small country of Chile on the 27th of February 2010, is apparently the largest recorded earthquake in the last 50 years. The earthquake was reportedly an 8.8 magnitude earthquake and struck at the local time of 3:43am. The epicentre of the earthquake was said to be 35km below the surface of the Pacific Ocean. The focus point was 150km away from the 2nd capital city of Concepcion, that is where the most damage was caused. The earthquake was so powerful that the shock waves could be felt across Argentina.
The earthquake happened for about 1 and a half minutes bringing buildings crashing to the ground. Throughout the following morning, aftershocks with a magnitude of 7 on the Richter scale shook the earthquake prone city. |
Tectonic SummaryThis massive earthquake occurred at the boundary of two very large tectonic plates, the Nazca and South American plates. The two plates are allegedly moving at about 88mm per year.
The earthquake occurred as a faulting on the interface between two plates as the Nazca plate subducted the South American plate. With the Nazca plate moving down and pushing the South American plate up-wards, the strike-slip caused widespread damage across the country of Chile. Chile has a large history of very large earthquakes as they are along the Ring of Fire. The earthquake also caused a tsunami because of all of the built up energy, the focus point let off so much energy that it sent energy waves through the ocean letting off huge waves. There were tsunami warnings sent to, Hawaii, New Zealand, Australia and Indonesia. |