The February 2001 El Salvador earthquake occurred with a moment magnitude of 6.6 on 13 February at 14:22:05 UTC. The epicentre was 15 miles (30 km) E of

San Salvador San Salvador (; ) is the capital and the largest city of El Salvador and its eponymous department. It is the country's political, cultural, educational and financial center. The Metropolitan Area of San Salvador, which comprises the capital i ...

, El Salvador. At least 315 people were killed, 3,399 were injured, and extensive damage affected the area. Another 16,752 homes were damaged and 44,759 destroyed. The most severe damage occurred in the

San Juan Tepezontes San Juan Tepezontes is a municipality in the La Paz department of El Salvador. Its name is a Hispanicization of a Nawat Nawat (academically Pipil, also known as Nicarao) is a Nahuan language native to Central America. It is the southernmost ...

- San Vicente-

Cojutepeque Cojutepeque () is the capital city of El Salvador's Cuscatlán department. It also served as the capital of San Salvador during several years. It also serves as the administrative centre for the surrounding municipality of Cojutepeque. Its popul ...

area, though it was felt throughout the country and in neighboring Guatemala and Honduras. Landslides occurred in many areas of El Salvador.

Tectonic setting

El Salvador lies above the

convergent boundary A convergent boundary (also known as a destructive boundary) is an area on Earth where two or more Plate tectonics, lithospheric plates collide. One plate eventually slides beneath the other, a process known as subduction. The subduction zone can ...

where

oceanic crust Oceanic crust is the uppermost layer of the oceanic portion of the tectonic plates. It is composed of the upper oceanic crust, with pillow lavas and a dike complex, and the lower oceanic crust, composed of troctolite, gabbro and ultramafic cumu ...

of the

Cocos Plate The Cocos Plate is a young oceanic tectonic plate beneath the Pacific Ocean off the west coast of Central America, named for Cocos Island, which rides upon it. The Cocos Plate was created approximately 23 million years ago when the Farallon Plate ...

is being

subducted Subduction is a geological process in which the oceanic lithosphere is recycled into the Earth's mantle at convergent boundaries. Where the oceanic lithosphere of a tectonic plate converges with the less dense lithosphere of a second plate, the ...

beneath the

Caribbean Plate The Caribbean Plate is a mostly oceanic tectonic plate underlying Central America and the Caribbean Sea off the north coast of South America. Roughly 3.2 million square kilometers (1.2 million square miles) in area, the Caribbean Plate borders ...

at rate of about 72 mm per year along the Middle America Trench. This boundary is associated with earthquakes resulting from movement on the plate interface itself, such as the 7.7 1992 Nicaragua earthquake, and from faulting within both the overriding Caribbean Plate associated with the active volcanic belt, such as the destructive 1936 San Salvador earthquake, and the subducting Cocos Plate, such as the 1982 El Salvador earthquake.

Earthquake

The

focal mechanism The focal mechanism of an earthquake describes the deformation in the source region that generates the seismic waves. In the case of a fault-related event it refers to the orientation of the fault plane that slipped and the slip vector and is ...

and depth of the earthquake are consistent with shallow

strike-slip faulting In geology, a fault is a planar fracture or discontinuity in a volume of rock across which there has been significant displacement as a result of rock-mass movements. Large faults within Earth's crust result from the action of plate tectonic ...

in the

, along the line of the active volcanic belt. The fault trend is confirmed by the distribution of aftershocks. Despite its magnitude and shallow

focus Focus, or its plural form foci may refer to: Arts * Focus or Focus Festival, former name of the Adelaide Fringe arts festival in South Australia Film *''Focus'', a 1962 TV film starring James Whitmore * ''Focus'' (2001 film), a 2001 film based ...

, there are no indications of

surface rupture In seismology, surface rupture (or ground rupture, or ground displacement) is the visible offset of the ground surface when an earthquake rupture along a fault affects the Earth's surface. Surface rupture is opposed by buried rupture, where the ...

for this earthquake. The earthquake occurred almost exactly a month after the major earthquake in January that affected the same area of the country. It remains unclear whether or not the two events are related in any way. Some previous earthquakes that were associated with the subduction zone were followed within a few years by shallow events. Examples include shallow earthquakes in 1917 and 1919 following a subduction event in 1915, and the shallow earthquake in 1936 following a subduction event in 1932.

Damage

The January earthquake had already caused considerable damage to buildings and left many people homeless. It had also triggered many landslides that were highly destructive. The February earthquake reactivated some of these landslides but also triggered new ones. 275,013 people were affected by the February earthquake of whom 315 died and a further 3,399 were injured. The majority of the casualties were in the departments of Cuscatlán (165 dead, 1,372 injured), San Vicente (87 dead, 1,220 injured) and

La Paz La Paz (), officially known as Nuestra Señora de La Paz (Spanish pronunciation: ), is the seat of government of the Bolivia, Plurinational State of Bolivia. With an estimated 816,044 residents as of 2020, La Paz is the List of Bolivian cities ...

(58 dead, 806 injured). A total of 44,750 houses were destroyed and a further 16,752 houses, 83 public buildings, 111 schools, 97 churches 5 hospitals and 36 other health facilities were damaged.

References

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:2001 El Salvador Earthquake 02 El Salvador 2001, 02 2001, 02 2001, 02 Earthquake 02 Earthquake 02 El Salvador earthquake

Tectonic setting

Earthquake

Damage

See also

References