Chilean officials said they regret spreading the panic with a mistaken tsunami warning asking people to leave coastal areas after an earthquake in Antarctica.
The interior ministry said on Twitter that a 7.1 magnitude quake struck at 8.36 am local time, 216 km northeast of O’Higgins’ Chilean scientific base, and called for the coastal regions of Antarctica to be evacuated due to the tsunami risk.
The ministry also sent a message to cell phones across the country asking people to leave coastal areas, although the ministry later said the sending was a mistake.
“We want to give peace of mind to the population, to tell them that it is not necessary to evacuate the entire national territory, only the Antarctic base,” said Miguel Ortiz, of the Ministry’s National Emergency Office, at a news conference.
He said the agency regrets the inconvenience caused by his messages, which he attributes to a technical error.
The tsunami alert in Antarctica was later withdrawn.
People in coastal cities, including La Serena, north of Santiago, and Valparaíso, began to leave areas close to the coast after the warning, until reports began to appear that it was a false alarm.
But as the Chileans reacted to the alert, a second 5.6 magnitude quake hit the Chile-Argentina border region at 9:07 pm, reported the German Geosciences Research Center at GFZ, 133 km deep and 30 km downstream. east of Santiago.
No damage was reported in any of the earthquakes.
The second was near the Andean and Teniente copper mines of Codelco and Los Bronces of Anglo American PLC.
Chilean mining regulator Sernageomin said mining workers, operations and facilities reported no problems after the earthquake.
Sernageomin said that after the first earthquake, 80 people were evacuated from Chile’s main base in Antarctica, President Eduardo Frei Montalva Base, on the Fildes Peninsula, west of King George Island, and another 55 from three other bases, along with five foreign bases.
The army said no damage was reported at the Antarctic base.
Chile is one of the most earthquake prone countries in the world. Off the coast, the Nazca tectonic plate plunges below the South American plate, pushing the Andes to ever higher altitudes.
In 2017, one million people were evacuated from their homes after an 8.3 magnitude earthquake.
The strongest recorded earthquake occurred in Chile in 1960, when a 9.5 magnitude quake killed more than 5,000 people.