2007 Tocopilla earthquake
7.7-magnitude earthquake occurred in November 2007
The 2007 Tocopilla earthquake occurred on November 14 at 12:40:50 local time. Its epicenter was located between Quillagua and Tocopilla, affecting the Tarapacá and the Antofagasta regions in northern Chile. The earthquake had a moment magnitude of 7.7 and lasted about 3 minutes and 35 seconds. Seventeen aftershocks of magnitude greater than 5.3, including one of magnitude 7.1 and two others of magnitude 6.3 or higher, were recorded. The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center issued a tsunami warning, stating a tsunami had been generated; after one hour, this warning was cancelled. The earthquake was felt from Santiago, 1,245 km south from the epicenter, to La Paz, about 700 km north-northeast.
Tectonic summary
The USGS reported that the earthquake resulted from the release of stresses generated by the subduction of the oceanic Nazca plate beneath the South American plate. In this region, known as the Peru-Chile subduction zone, the Nazca plate thrusts beneath South America at a rate of approximately 79 mm/year in an east-northeast direction. This earthquake indicates subduction-related thrusting, likely on the interface between these two plates.
This earthquake occurred near (and within) the southern end of the rupture area of the great magnitude 9.1 earthquake of 1877, which produced a destructive tsunami and whose source region has since the late 1970s been recognized as a potentially dangerous seismic gap.
The public source identifies “2007 Tocopilla earthquake” as 7.7-magnitude earthquake occurred in November 2007. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Tocopilla, earthquake and 7-magnitude.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 26, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q4609417. Authority coordinates are -22.189, -69.843. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2007 and 1877.
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This entry incorporates text from “2007 Tocopilla earthquake” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.