A 6.5 magnitude earthquake killed 12 people in Ecuador on Saturday.
At least 12 people died in a magnitude 6.5 earthquake in southern Ecuador on Saturday, which also struck Peru, according to an official report.
“Right now we have 12 dead,” including 11 in El Oro province and one in that of Azuay, the Presidency of Ecuador said on Twitter. The earthquake also injured at least one person and caused property damage.
This earthquake, which has its epicenter in southern Ecuador, also damaged several buildings. The 6.5-magnitude tremor was recorded at 12:12 p.m. local time (1712 GMT) in the Ecuadorian municipality of Balao, about 140 kilometers from the port of Guayaquil and at a depth of 44 kilometers, Ecuadorian authorities said.
Several aftershocks were felt
The American Seismological Institute (USGS) rated the magnitude at 6.8 on the Richter scale, while the Peruvian seismic authorities gave it a rating of 7.0. According to the Ecuadorian Secretariat for Risk Management, one person died in Cuenca (south) and three others in the area when a building collapsed.
In Peru, the director of the National Seismological Center, Hernando Tavera, told RPP radio that no casualties had been recorded and that “there was no significant damage.”
Aftershocks were felt, and the Ecuadorian Navy’s Oceanographic and Antarctic Institute asserted that the quake “does not meet the conditions necessary to trigger a Pacific tsunami.”
Peru and Ecuador lie within the Pacific Ring of Fire, a large seismic zone that stretches along the west coast of the Americas.
Jeanne Bulant with the AFP journalist BFMTV