Coastal residents of Chile's far-north spent a second sleepless night outside their homes early Thursday after a major aftershock rattled an area hit a day earlier by a magnitude-8.2 earthquake that caused some damage and six deaths. No new major damage or casualties were reported, according to Reuters.
After the 7.6-magnitude aftershock struck just before midnight Wednesday, Chile's Emergency Office and navy issued a tsunami alert and ordered a precautionary evacuation of low-lying areas for the country's whole 2,500-mile Pacific coastline, Reuters reported.
Among those moved inland was President Michelle Bachelet, who was in the city of Arica assessing damage in the north from Tuesday night's powerful quake, according to Reuters.
Chile's evacuation order initially applied to the entire coast, but authorities quickly lifted the alert for all but the far-northern shore and even ended it there around 2 a.m. Thursday, Reuters reported. The whole coast also was evacuated for several hours after Tuesday's quake, and for the night in the north, although the tsunami proved small.
There were no immediate reports of serious damage or injuries from the aftershock, which was one of dozens that have followed the magnitude-8.2 quake, Reuters reported.
State television said the aftershock caused some landslides near Alto Hospicio, a poor area in the hills above Iquique where about 2,500 homes were damaged by Tuesday' earthquake, according to Reuters.
Earlier, authorities reported just six deaths from Tuesday's magnitude-8.2 quake, but didn't rule out the possibility others could have been killed in older structures made of adobe in remote communities that weren't immediately accessible, Reuters reported.
The tsunami after Tuesday night's quake caused the sea to rise only 8 feet in Iquique, a city of nearly 200,000 people, although that was enough to sink and damage many fishing boats, according to Reuters.
Tuesday night's mandatory evacuation lasted 10 hours in Iquique and Arica, the cities closest to the epicenter, and kept 900,000 people out of their homes along Chile's coast, Reuters reported.
The order to leave was spread through cellphone text messages and Twitter, and reinforced by blaring sirens in neighborhoods where people regularly practice earthquake drills, according to Reuters.
The government has yet to install tsunami warning sirens in parts of Chile, leaving authorities to shout orders by megaphone and less than 15 percent of Chileans have downloaded the smartphone application that can alert them to evacuation orders, Reuters reported.
Chile is one of the world's most earthquake-prone countries, and tsunamis are a particular danger because of activity in the fault zone just offshore where the Nazca tectonic plate plunges beneath the South American plate, according to Reuters.
