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Authorities in Chile say they regret spreading panic with an erroneous warning of a tsunami calling for people to leave the coastal areas after the Antarctic earthquake.
A magnitude 7.1 earthquake struck at 8:36 pm 216 kilometres north-east of the Chilean O’Higgins Science Base on Twitter, the nation’s interior ministry said.
It called for the evacuation of coastal areas of Antarctica because of the risk of a tsunami.
The Ministry also sent a message to mobile phones around Chile urging people to leave coastal areas, although the Ministry subsequently stated that it had been sent in error.
Miguel Ortiz of the State of Emergency Office of the Ministry (ONEMI) told a press conference: “We want to provide peace of mind to the population, tell them that it is not necessary to evacuate the entire national territory, only the Antarctic base,”
He said the agency regretted the inconvenience of its messages, which he blamed on a technical mistake.
The tsunami warning was later lifted for Antarctica.
After the warning, people began to leave areas near the coast in coastal cities such as La Serena, north of Santiago, and Valparaiso, until reports began to appear that it was a false alarm.
The national emergency office in Chile #ONEMI just sent a message to abandon coastal areas. No explanation given. I am on nightshift and just mowed the lawn so a tsunami would be unwelcome. pic.twitter.com/NRP8hGur4I
— Boris van der Spek (@BorisvanderSpek) January 24, 2021
But as Chileans responded to the warning, a second magnitude 5.6 tremor struck the Chile-Argentina border region at 9:07 pm at a depth of 133 km, according to the GFZ German Geosciences Research Center.
No damage from either quake was reported.
According to Sernageomin, 80 people were evacuated from the main Antarctic base in Chile, the President Eduardo Frei Montalva Base on the Fildes Peninsula west of King George Island, and 55 more were evacuated from three other bases and five foreign bases following the first quake.
The Army said there was no damage reported at the Antarctic base.
