Historic Earthquakes

Near the Coast of Peru
1966 October 17 21:41 UTC
Magnitude 8.1

This earthquake, centering just off the coast from Callao, claimed about 125 lives and injured some 3,000 persons. The town of Huacho was the most severely damaged with over 20,000 inhabitants left homeless. A religious festival was being held in Callao and several were killed when some of the churches collapsed. One street in this city was split by a chasm several feet wide. In Lima, 2,300 houses suffered severe structural damage. Cars were tossed about, cornices plunged into streets, and traffic was snarled for hours. Landslides and huge ground cracks were reported along the Pan American Highway north of Ancon. This shock generated a tsunami with heights of 11.3 feet at La Punta-Callao.

Abridged from Earthquake Information Bulletin, Volume 1, Number 1, March 1967, and United States Earthquakes, 1966.