The Great Tumaco, Colombia Earthquake of 12 December 1979
- 30 January 1981
- journal article
- research article
- Published by American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in Science
- Vol. 211 (4481), 441-445
- https://doi.org/10.1126/science.211.4481.441
Abstract
Southwestern Colombia and northern Ecuador were shaken by a shal-low-focus earthquake on 12 December 1979. The magnitude 8 shock, located near Tumaco, Colombia, was the largest in northwestern South America since 1942 and had been forecast to fill a seismic gap. Thrust faulting occurred on a 280- by 130-kilometer rectangular patch of a subduction zone that dips east beneath the Pacific coast of Colombia. A 200-kilometer stretch of the coast tectonically subsided as much as 1.6 meters; uplift occurred offshore on the continental slope. A tsunami swept inland immediately after the earthquake. Ground shaking (intensity VI to IX) caused many buildings to collapse and generated liquefaction in sand fills and in Holocene beach, lagoonal, and fluvial deposits.Keywords
This publication has 8 references indexed in Scilit:
- Mapping Liquefaction-Induced Ground Failure PotentialJournal of the Geotechnical Engineering Division, 1978
- Structure and tectonic history of the eastern Panama BasinGSA Bulletin, 1978
- The energy release in great earthquakesJournal of Geophysical Research, 1977
- Magnitudes of great shallow earthquakes from 1904 to 1952Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America, 1977
- Numerical Modelling of Instantaneous Plate TectonicsGeophysical Journal International, 1974
- Tsunami and mechanism of great earthquakesPhysics of the Earth and Planetary Interiors, 1973
- Rupture zones of large South American earthquakes and some predictionsJournal of Geophysical Research, 1972
- Alaskan earthquake of 1964 and Chilean earthquake of 1960: Implications for arc tectonicsJournal of Geophysical Research, 1972