Earthquakes in Antofagasta

Antofagasta faces a very high seismic risk as part of northern Chile's intensely active subduction margin, where the Nazca plate dives beneath South America at one of the fastest convergence rates on Earth. This is a place of frequent and sometimes enormous earthquakes, and the coastal city is fully exposed to both violent ground shaking and the tsunamis that great offshore ruptures can generate. The 30 July 1995 Antofagasta earthquake, magnitude 8.0, struck just offshore and caused significant damage and a local tsunami.

What most concerns seismologists is the northern Chile seismic gap, a long stretch of the plate boundary that has not produced a great earthquake since the massive 1877 event and is therefore thought to be storing centuries of strain. The 2014 magnitude 8.2 Iquique earthquake to the north released only part of this accumulated stress, leaving the segment near Antofagasta still primed. This makes the region one of the highest-priority zones in the world for monitoring, early-warning systems and tsunami preparedness.