Landslides and building collapses after quake in Peru

A powerful 7.9-magnitude earthquake shook Peru’s coast, toppling buildings, setting off landslides and killing at least 15 people when a church collapsed in a southern city.

Authorities issued a tsunami warning for Latin America’s Pacific coast but later cancelled it when the wave measured only 20 to 30 centimetres (8-12 inches).

President Alan Garcia said the earthquake apparently had not caused a catastrophe.

“Thank you, God Almighty, these terrible quakes did not cause a high death toll like in other years,” he said in a nationally televised address. He did not give a death toll.

Firefighters said lamp posts collapsed and windows shattered in Lima. Hundreds of workers were evacuated from office buildings after the quake struck and remained outside, fearing more aftershocks.

“This is the strongest earthquake I’ve ever felt,” said Maria Pilar Mena, 47, a sandwich vendor in Lima. “When the quake struck, I thought it would never end.”

Health Minister Carlos Vallejos said there were 15 confirmed deaths in southern Peru from the quake, but Civil Defence put the death toll at 22, without giving a location.

Cable station Canal N reported that the quake had killed 17 people and injured 70 in the city of Ica 165 miles southeast of Lima. The report said a church had collapsed but it was not clear if that was the cause of all the victims.

Garcia ordered all police personnel to the streets of Lima to keep order. He said he was sending three Cabinet members, including the health minister, to the coastal town of Chincha and Ica, where news reports said the quake hit hardest.

The US Geological Survey said the 7.9 magnitude earthquake hit about 90 miles (145 kilometres) southeast of Lima at a depth of about 25 miles (41 kilometres). Six strong aftershocks ranging from magnitudes of 5.0 to 5.9 were felt afterward, the USGS said.

The quake struck at 6.40pm local time (00.40am Irish time).

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

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 neighbourhoods 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 centre. State doctors called off a national strike that began on Wednesday to handle the emergency.

Police reported that large boulders shook loose from hills and were blocking the country’s Centre Highway east of Lima.

The Hawaii-based Pacific Tsunami Warning Center issued 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 centre cancelled all the alerts after about two hours, but it said the quake had caused an estimated 10-inch tsunami near the epicentre.

“It wasn’t big enough to be destructive,” said Stuart Weinstein, the centre’s assistant director.

Fearing a possible tsunami, officials had ordered evacuations of some coastal areas including in the southern Colombian city of Tumaco and the Peruvian port of Callao.

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 Centre in Golden, Colorado.

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

Peru’s fire department chief Carlos Cordova later said 48 people had been killed in the earthquake and 350 injured.