On Saturday night, at 20:36, the country’s interior ministry sent a warning on Twitter that a magnitude 7.1 earthquake occurred, 216 kilometers northeast of the Chilean scientific base O’Higgins, at the top of the Antarctic Peninsula. In its tweet, the ministry called for the evacuation of Antarctic coastal regions due to a tsunami risk.
But the ministry sent the wrong message to mobile phones across the country, urging people to leave the coastal areas.
“We want to offer peace of mind to the population, to tell them that it is not necessary to evacuate the entire national territory, only the Antarctic base,” Miguel Ortiz of the ministry’s National Emergency Office (ONEMI) told a news conference.
He said the agency regretted the inconvenience caused by its messages, which it blamed for a technical error. The tsunami warning for Antarctica was later lifted.
But the clarification came too late to control the panic. People in coastal towns, including La Serena, north of Santiago and Valparaiso, began leaving coastal areas after the warning – until reports said it was a false alarm.
While the Chileans were reacting to the warning, a second quake, of magnitude 5.6, hit the Chile-Argentina border region, according to the German Geosciences Research Center GFZ. The quake measured 133 km (82.6 miles) deep and occurred 30 km (18.6 miles) east of Santiago.
None of the quakes were reported.
Sernageomin said that after the first earthquake, 80 people were evacuated from Chile’s main base in Antarctica, President Eduardo Frei Montalva base in the Fildes Peninsula, west of King George Island, and another 55 from three other bases, along with five foreign bases.
The second earthquake was near the Andean and Teniente de Codelco and Los Bronces copper mines from Anglo American PLC.
Chilean regulator Sernageomin said workers, operations and mining facilities reported no problems after the quake.