Earthquakes in Santiago, Chile: Live Map & Seismic Risk

Santiago, Chile's capital, sits in one of the most earthquake-prone countries on Earth. Although the city lies in the central valley, set back from the coastline, it is still shaken hard by the great earthquakes generated offshore along the Pacific subduction zone, as well as by movement on faults closer to the Andes. Chile sits where the Nazca plate dives beneath the South American plate along thousands of kilometres of coast, making this one of the most active earthquake zones on the planet.

Chile's seismic history is unmatched. The 1960 Valdivia earthquake, magnitude 9.5, remains the strongest ever instrumentally recorded anywhere in the world. On 27 February 2010, a magnitude 8.8 earthquake off the coast near Maule violently shook Santiago and unleashed a tsunami that struck the coast. That experience has pushed Chile to adopt some of the strictest seismic building codes on the planet, which sharply limits damage — yet living in Santiago still means living with earthquakes as a routine fact of life. Cortical faults closer to the capital, such as the San Ramón fault at the foot of the Andes, are also capable of shallow, potentially damaging earthquakes.