ECUADOR AND COLOMBIA MAJOR EARTHQUAKES.

The 1868 earthquake ocurred at 19:30 on August 15 and 6:30 on August 16th. The caused severe damage in the Northeastern part of Ecuador and in Southwestern Colombia. They had an estimated magnitude of 6.3 and 6.7 and together caused up to 70,000 casualties. Known faults within the area of the earthquake epicenters are the South Southwest-North Northeast trending San Isidro, El Angel, Ambi River, and Otavalo Faults, sometimes with reverse movement. On the 15 August the towns of El Angel and La Conception were severely shaken and with the 2nd movement literally ruined. On the 16 August, Ibarra was devastated, with every building destroyed. Nearby Otavalo was left without a single house standing and 6,000 dead. In Imbabura, there were 15-20,000 casualties.
The Inca ruler Atahualpa is said to have been born in the Inca settlement of Caranqui about 2 km from the city of Ibarra. Also Ibarra people are known as the inventors of the ice cream and sorbet during Inca times using snow or ice from the nearby Imbabura Volcano which is no longer snow bound and a large bronze pan surrounded by ice shavings and the juices of various fruits stirred into the pan to freeze.
The 1906 Ecuador-Colombia earthquake occurred at 15:36 on January 31, off the coast of Ecuador, near Esmeraldas. It had a moment magnitude of 8.8 and triggered a destructive tsunami that caused a number of deaths between 500 and 1,500 on the coast of Colombia. The greatest damage from the tsunami occurred on the coast between Rio Verde (Ecuador) and Micay (Colombia). The tsunami was noted in Costa Rica, Panama, Mexico, California, and Japan.
The coastal parts of Ecuador and Colombia have a well known history of great megathrust earthquakes due to the triple junction that originates from the Nazca Plate and the Northwest corner of the South American plate where the Nazca, Cocos, and Pacific plates converge.
The 1958 Ecuador-Colombia earthquake struck the coastal region on January 19 with a surface magnitude of 7.6 at 9:09 am, local time. Approximately 30% of Esmeraldas, the major seaport in Northwestern Ecuador, was destroyed. In all, 111 persons died and 45 were injured. Water mains were broken and power transmission lines were damaged. The Esmeraldas-Quito highway collapsed at many places. Many other roads of the country were made impassable by cracks and fallen trees. A landslide from the slopes of the Andes at Panado Village buried 100 people. The earthquake was destructive in the cities of the Northern coast of Ecuador and was strong from Latacunga to Quito, Ibarra and Tulcan. It also was felt at Guayaquil.
In Colombia, Tumaco, a port city in the Narino Department, suffered the most of all. Several old residences and a wooden home for railway workers collapsed. The large brick ovens used for drying pulp collapsed at the sawmills. Pile wooden homes rocked so strongly in a North-South direction, that 8 cm gaps appeared in the ground at the foundations. Eyewitnesses between Tumaco and Esmeraldas found it difficult to remain standing. Water washed out of cracks in the ground on Manglares Cape, and trees fell. The earthquake gave rise to a tsunami. The earthquake was strong at Pasto, Ipiales, Imuesa, Tuquerres, and Sapuyas; it lasted 40 minutes. At Cali and Pereira, the population was frightened. At Bogota, the pendulums stopped on the clocks at the seismic station.
In 1979 Tumaco earthquake occurred at 2:59 local time on 12 December with a moment magnitude of 8.2. The epicenter was just offshore from the border between Ecuador and Colombia, near the port city of Tumaco. It triggered a major tsunami, which was responsible for most of the estimated 300-600 deaths with another 4,000 injured. The tsunami was observed on the east coast of Japan, in Hawaii, Tahiti and Mexico.
The hardest hit area was Colombia's Narino Department. The earthquake was widely felt in both Ecuador (including Guayaquil, Esmeraldas and Quito) and Colombia (including Bogota, Cali, Popayan, and Buenaventura). The coast in the epicentral region subsided by up to 1.6 m during the earthquake and the land movement locally disrupted river drainage. In Tumaco about a tenth of all buildings were destroyed, including 1,280 houses. The fishing village of Charco was almost completely destroyed by the tsunami, the waves washed the houses inland into a nearby lake.
The 1983 Popayan earthquake occurred on 31 March in Popayan, Colombia. It had a magnitude of at least 5.5 with an epicenter south west of Popayan at a depth of 12-15 kms (7.5-9.3mi). The earthquake killed 267 people with a further 7,500 people injured. In total 14,000 buildings were damaged, the majority of them in the city's historic centre. Approximately 50 million of damage was caused. Serious damage was also caused to local infrastructure. The residents were left without electricity and water, communications were affected and the damage to the town's airport meant that it could only be used by helicopters and smaller planes. Many of the injured had to be airlifted to Cali, the nearest large city.
The 1994 Paez river earthquake occurred on June 6 with a moment magnitude of 6.8 at a depth of 12km (7.5 mi). It included subsequent landslides and mudslides that destroyed the small town of Paez, located on the foothills of the Central Cordillera of the Andes in Cauca Department in South-Western Colombia. It was estimated that 1,100, mostly from the Paez ethnia, were killed in some 15 settlements on the Paez River basin, Cauca, and Huila departments of which the town of Paez suffered 50% of the death toll.