Magnitude 7.5 quake strikes southern Ecuador
A very powerful magnitude-7.5 earthquake struck southern Ecuador in the early hours of Friday. No immediate reports of possible casualties or damage were available.
The U.S. Geological Survey said the quake close to the country’s border with Peru happened at 2:17 a.m. PST, 71 miles southeast of the town of Palora, in the Morona Santiago province, at a depth of 82 miles.
The quake was felt in the Ecuadorean capital, Quito, and the coastal city of Guayaquil.
Peru’s official geophysics institute said it registered two aftershocks of 6.06 and 6.6 in the 30 minutes after the first tremor.
Ecuadorean President Lenin Moreno said on his official Twitter account that “preliminary reports of the quakes near Macas (the provincial capital of Morona Santiago) don’t show major damage.”
The quakes, he wrote, “were felt all over the country.”
A magnitude-7.8 earthquake that shook a central area of the Ecuadorean coast on April 16, 2016, killed more than 700 people, destroyed hundreds of houses and caused more than $3 billion in losses.
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