A powerful magnitude-8.2 earthquake has struck off Chile's northern coast, killing at least five people and setting off a small tsunami that forced evacuations along the country's entire Pacific coast.
The shaking also loosed landslides that blocked roads, power failed for thousands, an airport was damaged and several businesses caught fire.
Chile's Interior Minister Rodrigo Penailillo said four men and a women had died in the cities of Iquique and Alto Hospicio, either from heart attacks or being crushed by debris.
About 300 inmates escaped from a women's prison in the city of Iquique, and officials said Chile's military was sending a planeload of special forces to guard against looting.
A tsunami warning remained in effect for northern Chile.
"We regard the coast line of Chile as still dangerous, so we're maintaining the warning," geophysicist Gerard Fryer at the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center told The Associated Press.
Chile's Emergency Office said its tsunami watch would remain in effect for six more hours, meaning hundreds of thousands of people along the coast would not sleep in their beds.
A tsunami advisory has been issued for Hawaii. A tsunami advisory is less significant than a tsunami warning, and while sea level changes and strong currents may occur, it is not expected to involve widespread flooding.
New Zealand Civil Defence said there was no tsunami threat here, but currents would be stronger than usual on the east coast from about 2.30am tomorrow and would continue throughout the day.
"Currents are likely to be strongest in harbours and estuaries.
"People on beaches or boats should take additional care."
In the city of Arica, 139 kilometres from the quake's epicentre, minor injuries were reported and some homes made of adobe were destroyed, officials said. The quake shook modern buildings in nearby Peru and in Bolivia's high altitude capital of La Paz.
Kiwi Ross Moorhouse, 72, a former Nelson resident who has lived in Arica since 2001, said the quake was one of the strongest he had felt.
"It was about 90 kilometres south of us, it went on for about 45 seconds and yeah it was quite a good shake," he said.
"It was interesting, lots of things were breaking and falling down."
Moorhouse told Fairfax Media a house about 500m from him was badly damaged, but his own home was strongly built and escaped unscathed. The alarms were well organised and he did not know anyone who suffered injuries in his city.
The US Geological Survey initially reported the quake at 8.0, but later upgraded the magnitude. It said the quake struck 99km northwest of the Chilean city of Iquique at 8.46pm (12.46pm NZT), hitting a region that has been rocked by numerous quakes over the past two weeks.
Psychiatrist Ricardo Yevenes said he was with a patient in Arica when the quake hit. "It quickly began to move the entire office, things were falling," he told local television. "Almost the whole city is in darkness."
The quake was so strong that the shaking experienced in Bolivia's capital about 470km away was the equivalent of a 4.5-magnitude tremor, authorities there said.
At least 10 strong aftershocks followed in the first few hours, including a 6.2 tremor. More aftershocks and even a larger quake could not be ruled out, seismologist Mario Pardo, of the University of Chile, said.
LANDSLIDES, EVACUATIONS
Some roads in northern Chile were blocked by landslides, causing traffic jams among people leaving the coast. But coastal residents remained calm as they headed inland while waves measuring almost 2m struck their cities.
Evacuations were also ordered in Peru, where waves 2m higher than normal forced about 200 people to leave the seaside town of Boca del Rio.
There were no injuries or major damage, Colonel Enrique Blanco, the regional police chief in Tacna, a Peruvian city of 300,000 near the Chilean border, said.
"The lights went out briefly, but were re-established," Blanco said.
Chile is one of the world's most earthquake-prone countries because just off the coast, the Nazca tectonic plate plunges beneath the South American plate, pushing the towering Andes cordillera to ever-higher altitudes.
The latest activity began with a strong magnitude-6.7 quake on March 16 that caused more than 100,000 people to briefly evacuate low-lying areas.
Hundreds of smaller quakes followed in the weeks since, keeping people on edge as scientists said there was no way to tell if the unusual string of tremors was a harbinger of an impending disaster.
The last recorded big quake to hit far northern Chile around Iquique was a devastating magnitude-8.3 in 1877. It unleashed a 24m-high tsunami, causing major damage along the Chile-Peru coast and fatalities as far away as Hawaii and Japan.
A magnitude-8.8 quake and ensuing tsunami in central Chile in 2010 killed more than 500 people, destroyed 220,000 homes, and washed away docks, riverfronts and seaside resorts. That quake released so much energy, it shortened the Earth's day by a fraction of a second by changing the planet's rotation.
The strongest earthquake ever recorded on Earth also happened in Chile – a magnitude-9.5 tremor in 1960 that killed more than 5000 people.
Chile is the world's leading copper producing nation, and most of its mining industry is in the northern regions. Top mining companies said there was no serious damage to their operations so far.
Source: Associated Press and Stuff.co.nz
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