A 7.2-magnitude earthquake struck off the coast of Peru early Friday, injuring at least three people, triggering a tsunami alert and shaking buildings as far as the capital, Lima, about 600 miles away, according to officials.
The quake struck about a mile off the coast of Peru’s Arequipa region at 12:36 a.m. local time, the U.S.G.S. said. Several aftershocks were also recorded off Arequipa, Peru’s National Seismological Center said.
Peruvian authorities issued a tsunami alert on the country’s coast and warned that waves could reach the town of Puerto Atico by 12:52 a.m. The United States Tsunami Warning Center said about an hour later that the tsunami threat had passed.
Peru’s Ministry of Health said in a statement that a hospital in the town of Acari, near the epicenter, had treated three people with “minor injuries.” There were reports of landslides, damaged homes and blocked roads, according to the local news media.
After the quake, videos on social media showed furniture and security cameras shaking for nearly 30 seconds, including in Lima.
The U.S.G.S. said that residents near the earthquake lived in buildings that were “highly vulnerable to earthquake shaking,” such as those built with mud wall and masonry construction.
Peru lies on a plate boundary that stretches across the western coast of South America. The world’s strongest recorded earthquake was a 9.6-magnitude temblor in 1960 along that boundary in Chile, the U.S.G.S. said.
Peru’s last deadly earthquake killed at least two people in 2022 at magnitude 5.4, the U.S.G.S. said. In 2018, a 7.1-magnitude quake near Arequipa killed at least 14 people and left 12,000 people homeless.
An earthquake that originated off Peru in 1970 was one of the worst in the country’s history, killing about 70,000 people, leaving 200,000 others without shelter and prompting a worldwide humanitarian response.
