Earthquake Today: 6.7-Magnitude Temblor Hits Chile and Argentina

An earthquake struck the border of Chile and Argentina on Wednesday.
Earthquake Today: 6.7-Magnitude Temblor Hits Chile and Argentina
An earthquake struck the border of Chile and Argentina on Wednesday. (USGS)
Jack Phillips
2/11/2015
Updated:
7/18/2015

An earthquake struck the border of Chile and Argentina on Wednesday.

The US Geological Survey said the 6.9-magnitude quake hit after 2 p.m. ET, but it corrected it to 6.7-magnitude.

The quake hit 50 miles west of El Aguilar, Argentina in Jujuy.

It’s unclear if there were any injuries.

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AP update:

SEATTLE (AP) — What would you do with a few seconds or minutes of warning before an earthquake strikes?

When late-night comedian Conan O'Brien considered the question recently, the result was a laugh-out-loud segment with people stampeding into walls, snapping risqué selfies or cranking up the boom box for one last dance.

A more sober — and useful — range of options will be on the table next week, when a small group of businesses and agencies embark on the Northwest’s first public test of a prototype earthquake early-warning system.

“Up until now, we’ve been running it and watching the results in-house only,” said John Vidale, director of the Pacific Northwest Seismic Network at the University of Washington.

Now, companies including Boeing, Alaska Airlines and Intel will be able to work with the system and figure out how to make use of warning times so slight they seem at first like a joke.

But earthquake early warning has proved its worth in countries like Japan, where alerts are blasted out to the general public via cellphone, bullet trains automatically coast to a stop and manufacturing plants are hard-wired to shut down.

The approach is based on the fact that the first vibrations produced when a fault ruptures zip through the ground at blazing speeds but generally don’t cause much damage. By detecting those initial signals, the system can sound an alert before the strongest shaking arrives.

For nearby quakes, there’s not much benefit. But for more distant quakes, the time lag can be 30 seconds or more.

Jack Phillips is a breaking news reporter with 15 years experience who started as a local New York City reporter. Having joined The Epoch Times' news team in 2009, Jack was born and raised near Modesto in California's Central Valley. Follow him on X: https://twitter.com/jackphillips5
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