A 6.7-magnitude earthquake rattled a remote stretch of the Andes Mountains in southern Peru on Thursday, leaving a trail of damaged infrastructure and three non-critically injured people, according to local and international seismic and emergency officials.
The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) placed the quake’s epicenter roughly 31 kilometers (19 miles) northwest of the tiny settlement of Aniso in the Ayacucho region, hitting at approximately 1 p.m. local time (6 p.m. GMT) at a depth of 100 kilometers (62 miles). Seismic authorities in Peru recorded a higher magnitude of 7.2 for the event. Shaking from the quake was detected across broad swathes of the country, even reaching the capital city of Lima located more than 480 kilometers (300 miles) from the impact zone.
Peru’s National Institute of Civil Defence confirmed that the seismic event caused damage to more than a dozen infrastructure sites across the southern highlands. In addition to the 22 residential homes and six schools damaged in Ayacucho reported by Defense Minister Rafael Belaunde, 10 healthcare facilities in the region also sustained damage. Two additional medical centers were impacted in the adjacent Cusco region, though all health services have remained fully operational throughout the affected areas. Approximately 9,000 residential properties across the impact zone lost power following the quake, and the total count of damaged educational facilities has risen to nine. Photographs from Pausa, a Peruvian town located roughly 74 kilometers (46 miles) from the epicenter, show thick dust clouding the air in the wake of the tremor.
Peru is no stranger to frequent seismic activity, as its territory sits along the volatile convergent boundary where the Nazca tectonic plate slides beneath the South American tectonic plate. Thursday’s quake marks the latest in a string of powerful seismic events to hit South America in recent months, coming on the heels of two deadly major quakes that struck the northern part of the continent. In late June, a pair of large earthquakes measuring magnitudes 7.2 and 7.5 hit Venezuela just 39 seconds apart, leaving more than 6,000 people dead according to local official counts. A 7.4-magnitude quake that hit Colombia on August 10 has claimed more than 300 lives, and the national government declared a national state of emergency in response to the disaster.
As of the latest updates, emergency response teams are coordinating assessments of the damage across the affected Andean regions, with no reports of fatalities connected to Thursday’s earthquake released to the public.