Strong earthquake rocks Brazil-Peru borderPosted: 25 May 2010 0211 hrs
BRASILIA: A strong 6.3-magnitude earthquake struck on Monday in a jungle area near the mountainous border of Brazil and Peru but was barely felt on the surface and caused no damage, US and Brazilian experts said.
The temblor, with its centre about 127 kilometres east-southeast of Cruzeiro do Sul, Brazil, and 328 kilometres east of Pucallpa, in Peru's Andes, struck at 1618 GMT, the USGS said.
The quake originated a relatively deep 580 kilometres under the surface.
A spokesman for the civil defence service in Cruziero do Sul said the quake almost went unnoticed, and added such activity was not unusual in the region.
"This zone suffers a lot of earthquakes, but the last one we really felt was 20 days ago. We didn't register any disorder or damage on the surface" from Monday's quake," he said.
Brazil's Seismological Observatory told AFP the region sat above the South American and Andean tectonic plates, which resulted in a lot of deep-earth seismic activity.
"Generally speaking, quakes more than 500 kilometres deep don't leave signals in the surface, they are only detected by instruments," one observatory official said.
On Sunday, another strong 5.9-magnitude earthquake jolted several regions of Peru including the capital, Lima, with no damage immediately reported, Peru's National Geophysics Institute reported. - AFP/de
