Twelve people were killed in Ecuador on Saturday after an earthquake measuring 6.5 on the Richter scale.
An earthquake measuring 6.5 on the Richter scale in southern Ecuador, which also hit Peru, killed at least 12 people on Saturday, according to an official report.
“At the moment we have 12 deaths,” including 11 in El Oro province and one in Azuay province, Ecuador’s presidency said on Twitter. The earthquake also injured at least one person and caused property damage.
This earthquake, whose epicenter is in southern Ecuador, also damaged several buildings. The magnitude-6.5 quake was recorded at 12:12 a.m. local time (1712 GMT) in the Ecuadorian municipality of Balao, some 140 kilometers from the port of Guayaquil and at a depth of 44 kilometers, Ecuadorian authorities said. .
Several aftershocks felt
The American Seismological Institute (USGS) estimated the magnitude at 6.8 on the Richter scale, the Peruvian seismological authorities announced it at 7.0. According to the Ecuadorian secretariat for risk management, one person died when a building collapsed in Cuenca (south) and three others in the area.
In Peru, the director of the National Seismological Center, Hernando Tavera, told RPP radio that no casualties had been recorded and that “there is (was) no significant damage.”
Aftershocks were felt and the Ecuadorian Navy’s Oceanographic and Antarctic Institute assured that the quake “does not meet the conditions necessary to trigger a tsunami” in the Pacific Ocean.
Peru and Ecuador are located in the Pacific Ring of Fire, a major seismic zone that stretches along the western coast of the American continent.