Iquique earthquake, 1877
| Iquique earthquake | |||
|---|---|---|---|
|
|||
| date | May 9, 1877 | ||
| intensity | XI on the MM scale | ||
| Magnitude | 8.8 M W | ||
| epicenter | 19 ° 36 ′ 0 ″ S , 70 ° 12 ′ 0 ″ W | ||
| country | then Peru , now Chile | ||
| Tsunami | Yes | ||
| dead | 2541 | ||
The 1877 Iquique earthquake was a major earthquake on May 9, 1877 at 9:16 p.m. local time (0:59 a.m. on May 10, UTC ). It had a magnitude of 8.8 on the moment magnitude scale and a maximum perceived intensity of XI (extreme) on the Mercalli scale . It triggered a devastating tsunami . In total, 2541 people were killed by the effects of the earthquake, mainly in Peru and northern Chile , but Hawaii and Japan , which the tsunami hit, also reported casualties.
Tectonic overview
The coastal regions of Peru and Chile lie above the subduction zone , where the Nazca plate pushes under the South American plate , along the Atacama Trench . The rate of convergence is about eight inches per year. This plate boundary was the site of numerous large megathrust earthquakes ; other earthquake events in the region are caused by faults within both the subducting and thrusting plates.
Damage
The tremors caused significant damage along the coastal areas of the Tarapacá (then Peru ) and Antofagasta (then Bolivia ) regions . The tsunami reached a wave height of ten meters over a length of 500 kilometers - from Arica in the north to Mejillones in the south . In Arica the tidal wave reached the cathedral. The wreck of the USS Wateree , which was washed several hundred meters inland by the last tidal wave of the tsunami triggered by the Arica earthquake in 1868, was transported several kilometers further north and closer to the actual shore line by the tsunami. The tsunami killed five people and destroyed 37 homes in Hilo , Hawaii. In Japan, numerous residents died in the tsunami on the Bōsō Peninsula .
Earthquake and tsunami
The tremors lasted about five minutes in Caleta Pabellón de Pica, a coastal town about 70 km south of Iquique . The area with a perceived intensity of VIII or more on the Mercalli scale ranged from about 50 km south of Arica to south of Cobija . From this a cracking of the earth's crust can be deduced over a length of about 420 km.
The tsunami affected the coast of Peru, Bolivia (which had access to the sea before the Saltpeter War ) and northern Chile. On the other side of the Pacific Ocean, it also reached Australia , New Zealand , Samoa , Tonga and Fiji, as well as Hawaii , Mexico , California and Japan north of the equator . A total of eight individual tsunami waves were observed in Arica. The height of the tsunami reached on the Hawaiian Islands in Hilo 5 m and in Kahului 6.6 m and on the Japanese islands of Honshū in Kamaishi 3 m and on Hokkaidō in Hakodate a height of 2.4 m. In Nagasaki in the south of the island of Kyūshū the wave height was 3 m and in Wellington, New Zealand, 1.5 m.
Risk of earthquakes in the future
The area where the earth's crust ruptured in 1877 was recognized as one of the major seismic gaps . The 2007 Tocopilla earthquake with a magnitude M w = 7.7 occurred on the southern edge of this gap. The risk of a large megathrust earthquake within this area was only marginally reduced. A repetition time of 135 years for large earthquakes has been estimated in this area, so that a large earthquake with a similar sequence as in 1877 is likely to be imminent in the near future.
literature
- Eugen Geinitz : The earthquake of Iquique on May 9, 1877 and the earthquake flood caused by it in the Great Ocean (= Nova Acta of the Ksl. Leop.-Carol. German Academy of Natural Scientists), No. 9th edition, Volume Volume XL. 1878, OCLC 31874761 .
supporting documents
- ↑ a b c Bertrand Delouis, Pardo Mario; Legrand, Denis and Monfret, Tony: The Mw 7.7 Tocopill, a Earthquake of November 14, 2007 at the Southern Edge of the Northern Chile Seismic Gap: Rupture in the Deep Part of the Coupled Plate Interface Archived from the original on July 24, 2011. Info : The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF) In: Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America . 99, No. 1, 2009, pp. 87-94. doi : 10.1785 / 0120080192 .
- ↑ NGDC: Comments for the Significant Earthquake ( English ) Retrieved on January 26, 2011th
- ↑ a b Tokutaro Hatori: Study on distant tsunamis along the Coast of Japan. Part 2, tsunamis of South American origin Archived from the original on August 7, 2011. Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF) In: Bulletin of the Earthquake Research Institute . 46, 1968, pp. 345-359. Retrieved January 26, 2011.
- ^ Robert Louis Kovach: Early earthquakes of the Americas . Cambridge University Press, 2004, ISBN 9780521824897 , p. 138.
- ↑ a b NGDC: Tsunami Runups . Retrieved December 31, 2010.
- ^ Diana Comte, Pardo, Mario: Reappraisal of Great Historical Earthquakes in the Northern Chile and Southern Peru Seismic Gaps . In: Natural Hazards . 4, 1991, pp. 23-44. doi : 10.1007 / BF00126557 .
- ↑ NGDC: Comments for the Tsunami Runup - Arica ( English ) Retrieved January 26, 2011.
- ↑ Yolanda Zamudio, Berrocal, Jesus and Fernandes, Celia: Seismic hazard assessment in the Peru-Chile border region ( English , PDF; 138 kB) In: 6th International Symposium on Andean Geodynamics (ISAG 2005, Barcelona), Extended Abstracts . Pp. 813-816. 2005. Retrieved January 26, 2011.
