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.