1940 Lima earthquake

The Lima, Peru earthquake occurred on May 24, 1940 at 11:35 a.m. PST with a magnitude of 8.2 on the moment magnitude scale. Shaking from this powerful earthquake was felt throughout the country, and in Ecuador and Chile. About 179 to 300 Peruvians lost their lives, and 3,500 were injured. The earthquake was centered near the coastal cities of Huacho and Huaura, about 150 km north of the Peruvian capital, Lima. A tsunami of up to two meters was generated without major damage.
Earthquake.
The earthquake was a megathrust event, caused by a sudden slippage along a section of fault under the Peru–Chile Trench. Here, the Nazca Plate subducts beneath the South American Plate at a rate of 10 cm/yr, this process could be seen throughout the entire west coast of South America. The interface where both plates make contact occasionally produce moderate to great earthquakes. During the May 1940 earthquake, it is thought that a 162 by 71 km segment of the megathrust ruptured, with an average offset of 2.7 meters. A maximum uplift of 1.27 m, and subsidence of 0.36 m has been estimated. Its rupture area is wedged between that of the 1966 and 1974 earthquake.
Damage.
In Lima, the devastation was great, 32 people were killed in this city alone, while in Callao, the death toll was at 58. The Lima Cathedral was badly damaged, together with several thousand buildings. At Bellavista, there were 11 deaths, ten of them were children when the school they were in collapsed, and in San Miguel, two were dead. An estimated 3.6 million Peruvian sols worth of damage was caused by the earthquake. 