Megamodels: Chile’s insurance sector sharpens up Posted on
A photo taken of a destroyed factory near Corral, Chile, after a tsunami resulting from the Valdivia earthquake in 1960. Credit: Buonasera, Wikipedia Commons
In 1960, Chile experienced an earthquake that shook the region for nearly ten minutes. The Valdivia earthquake, as it was eventually named, triggered a tsunami with waves more than 38 feet (12 meters) tall that devastated parts of the Chilean coast. As host to the most powerful quake ever recorded estimated between magnitude 9.4 and 9.6 South America, and Chile in particular, is what earthquake experts often refer to as a “natural laboratory” for seismology.