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Home
» World News » Americas

Magnitude 7.9 earthquake jolts Peru

Lima shaken; 17 reported killed in coastal city; tsunami warning
canceled

NBC video

Earthquake
shakes Peru
Aug. 15: Lima residents
flood the streets after an earthquake jolts the city. NBC News' Peter
Alexander reports

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BREAKING NEWS

MSNBC staff and news service reports

Updated: 11:00 p.m. ET Aug. 15, 2007

LIMA, Peru - A powerful earthquake
shook Peru’s coast near the capital on Wednesday, killing at least 17 people and
injuring 200 as it toppled homes and caused many residents to flee buildings.
Authorities said the quake had generated a small tsunami but it wasn't
destructive.

The Lima newspaper Cronica Viva
and other news services reported that 17 people were killed in the southern
coastal city of Ica, the site of a popular annual Catholic pilgrimage at the
Church of Lúren, which collapsed. At least 70 others were wounded there,
witnesses said.

Medical services in Ica, 300 miles
south of Lima, were described by witnesses as non-existent.

Story continues
below ↓

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The U.S. Geological Survey said
the earthquake hit at 6:40 p.m. about 90 miles southeast of Lima at a depth of
about 25 miles. Four strong aftershocks ranging from magnitudes of 5.4 to 5.9
were felt afterwards.

The Hawaii-based Pacific Tsunami
Warning Center responded with a tsunami warning for the coasts of Peru, Chile,
Ecuador, Colombia, Costa Rica and Panama. A tsunami watch was issued for the
rest of Central America and Mexico and an advisory for Hawaii.

The center canceled all the alerts
after about two hours, but it said the quake had caused an estimated 10-inch
tsunami near the epicenter.

"It wasn't big enough to be
destructive," said Stuart Weinstein, the center's assistant director.

An Associated Press photographer
said that homes had collapsed in the center of Lima and that many people had
fled into the streets for safety. The capital shook for more than a minute.

Firefighters quoted in radio
reports said that many street lights and windows shattered in Lima but did not
specify if there were any injuries. Hundreds of workers were evacuated from Lima
office buildings after the quake struck and remained outside, fearing
aftershocks

Callers to Radioprogramas, Peru's
main news radio station, said parts of several cities in southern Peru had been
hit with blackouts. Callers reported homes in poor neighborhoods in Chincha and
Cerro Azul had collapsed.

The quake also knocked out
telephone service and mobile phone service in the capital. Firefighters were
called to put out a fire in a shopping center. State doctors called off a
national strike that began on Wednesday to handle the emergency.

Cities evacuated due to
tsunami threat
The last time a quake of magnitude 7.0 or larger
struck Peru's central coast was in 1974 when a magnitude 7.6 hit in October
followed by a 7.2 a month later.

The latest Peru quake
occurred in a subduction zone where one section of the Earth's crust dives under
another, said USGS geophysicist Dale Grant at the National Earthquake
Information Center in Golden, Colo.

Some of the world's biggest quakes
strike in subduction zones including the catastrophic Indian Ocean temblor in
2004 that generated deadly tsunami waves.

The tsunami warnings caused alarm
up and down the coast.

Alex Kouri president of the Callao
region, which includes the port of Callao, adjacent to Lima, urged residents to
remain calm in the face of any possible tsunami, while other officials told
Radioprograms they were going to evacuate La Punta, a Callao neighborhood,
because of the potential threat of a tsunami.

In Colombia, President Alvaro
Uribe ordered the partial evacuation of the southern city of Tumaco in response
to the warning.

Click for related
content

Experts answer questions about
earthquakes

In a press conference, Uribe said
residents living along the coastal areas of Tumaco, Colombia's southernmost city
near the border with Ecuador, should immediately move to higher ground as a
preventive measure in case a tsunami strikes.

"The reports we received about a
possible tsunami are contradictory so we've asked that, according to emergency
disaster plans, authorities immediately begin the partial evacuation of Tumaco,"
said Uribe.

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MSNBC.com’s Alex Johnson, The Associated Press and
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