river
A river is a natural flowing watercourse, usually freshwater, flowing towards an ocean, sea, lake or another river. In some cases, a river flows into the ground and becomes dry at the end of its course without reaching another body of wate ...
Chile
Chile, officially the Republic of Chile, is a country in the western part of South America. It is the southernmost country in the world, and the closest to Antarctica, occupying a long and narrow strip of land between the Andes to the east a ...
. Where the river reaches the
Pacific Ocean
The Pacific Ocean is the largest and deepest of Earth's five oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the Southern Ocean (or, depending on definition, to Antarctica) in the south, and is bounded by the continen ...
stands the small fishing village of Tubul.
The coastline near the egress of the river is cliff-lined and hilly. Prior to 1835, the lower mile of the river was navigable. An earthquake in that year temporarily blocked off the river by raising the sand bar. In 2010 nearby Concepción was struck by a magnitude 8.8
earthquake
An earthquake (also known as a quake, tremor or temblor) is the shaking of the surface of the Earth resulting from a sudden release of energy in the Earth's lithosphere that creates seismic waves. Earthquakes can range in intensity, from ...
. Multiple waves generated by the earthquake, arriving from both the ocean and the river, struck and nearly destroyed the village of Tubul.