Last Sunday, an 8.0-magnitude earthquake took place in Loreto and has left two deceased so far in Peru, as well as 15 injured and 226 affected families. It has also led to many theories of what would happen if a quake like this one or worse hit the country’s capital city.
Lima concentrates Peru’s largest population and, according to the 2015-2025 City Risk Index of the English insurance market Lloyd’s (London) -effective to date-, the economic losses in the capital would exceed $35 billion US dollars in a major earthquake, a figure that does not consider a possible tsunami provoked by this hypothetical situation.
El Comercio published a piece of information in 2017 where they announce a possible large-scale earthquake to take place in the central coast of Peru, according to scientific evidence. “Lima, the most populated city and the economic engine of the country, would be the most affected”, they wrote.
Hernando Tavera, of the Subdirectorate of Solid Earth Sciences of the Geophysical Institute of Peru (IGP), told this media that “they are statistical methods that give probabilities, not predictions. The truth is that 270 years have passed since the last earthquake and the probability that it will happen again increases.”
According to the article, there is a lot of accumulated energy in the coast of Tacna, Moquegua and Arequipa, that could release into an earthquake.
