The Earthquake that Nearly Cooked Chile

Added: 2026-05-27

[00:00:00]66 years ago today, the earth was torn asunder [music] as the Ring of Fire spread chaos throughout the country of Chile.

[00:00:06]Basically, they were hit with a massive earthquake. You see, Chile has a problem, and that'd be the Ring of Fire.

[00:00:12]In fact, most countries that touch the Pacific Ocean have this problem.

[00:00:16]Generally speaking, the Pacific Plate under the Pacific Ocean is slowly being gobbled up by the surrounding continental plates. For this reason, the area surrounding the Pacific Plate tend to have more volcanoes, mountains, and earthquakes. When specifically looking at Chile, which sits on the South American Plate, many of their geological disasters stem [music] from the subducting Nazca Plate. As the Nazca Plate gets pushed under the South American Plate, it causes the actual terrain of Chile to change. This is seen most clearly in the formation of the Andes Mountains, and it's why they're home to one of the most active chains of volcanoes in the world. The problem is is that the Andes were formed over millions of years of the subduction.

[00:00:51][music] When plates collide, they can get caught in one another. That is, until they slip, which is what happened in Chile in May of 1960. [music] As the Nazca Plate slipped under the South American Plate, it created a roughly 7.6 magnitude earthquake that shook Chile to its [music] core, literally. But, the worst was yet to come as this devastating earthquake was only a foreshock. The next day around 3:00, [music] Chile was ripped open by the largest earthquake on record with an earth-shattering magnitude of 9.5. The landslides alone, which were produced from the quake, turned the Pacific Ocean into a bathtub, creating tsunamis that killed over 100 people in Japan. Waves from this incident went back and forth across [music] the Pacific Ocean for a week. Overall, nearly 5,000 people were killed and another [music] 2 million were left homeless from this disaster.

[00:01:40]Even though I don't love covering these tragedies, I do think it's important.

[00:01:44]History rhymes, so it's necessary [music] to study these events in hopes of stopping them from happening again in the future, at least to the best of our ability. Mother nature can be fickle, and that's your history today.