Magnitude 8.0 earthquake, 75km SSE of Lagunas, Peru | Hacker News Reader

Magnitude 8.0 earthquake, 75km SSE of Lagunas, Peru

earthquake.usgs.gov

75 pointsjohnabela12 comments

That region is not densely populated fortunately. Mostly affected are Yurimaguas (population 60k), Tarapoto (population 180k) and Moyobamba (population 80k).

From what I gathered on Twitter, there are some collapsed buildings and some power outages, probably a few people hurt, but nothing as devastating as during the 2007 earthquake in Ica.

This happened in the middle of the night and it's now early morning, so more news will probably come in over the next hours.

Not "densely" populated unless you're one of the 240k living there.

Whether you're affected or not it's still not "densely populated". The GP isn't saying it somehow doesn't matter, just that thankfully fewer people will be negatively impacted by it.

I lived about 300 km from the epicenter for many years. Large parts of that region are nothing but jungle and rivers, with little villages spread around. The natives build their houses/huts mostly using tree trunks tied together with vines, which are surprisingly resistant to strong earthquakes because the structure is so flexible.

Yurimaguas and Tarapoto do have a sizeable population, but still, from what I heard so far the damage is nothing compared to the 2007 M8 quake that destroyed 85% of Pisco and killed many hundred people.

Thing is they're probably not living in big constructions, just small huts which is much easier to survive these tragedies I think.

Alarms in the building woke me up at 2:41 AM and the doors were shaking, so we evacuated the apartment buildings and only returned after half an hour.

I live in Bogotá, Colombia, about 1200 kilometers away from the epicentre.

8.0+ earthquakes are quite unique, there's on average only one 8.0+ earthquake per year. [1]

[1] https://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/browse/stats.php

I can't even comprehend the amount of energy required for an 8.0M earthquake.

From searching it seems an 8.0M earthquake is equivalent to a nuclear explosion of 6,270,000 tons of TNT but a 7.0M is 199,000 tons of TNT.

yes, it's log scale

My girlfriend was in Barranco at the time of the earthquake and had to leave the building because she and her family felt unsafe (in all the years I've known her it's the first time they actually thought it was serious enough to evacuate). Pretty scary I'd say.

It would be interesting to see an interactive map with 'live earthquakes' and a timeline to go back in time.

No "timeline", which I assume you mean some kind of sliding window, but if you know how to use the search function, this site is the gold standard.

https://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/map/

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