M4.5 earthquake near Ollagüe, Chile

A magnitude 4.5 earthquake struck 57 km (35 mi) southwest of Ollagüe, Chile on Saturday, November 7, 2026 at 10:53 UTC, at a depth of 111 km (69 mi), according to the U.S. Geological Survey. At this intermediate depth, shaking spreads out before it reaches the surface. The nearest city of a million or more people is Cochabamba, about 533 km (331 mi) away.
Why here?
This earthquake struck 111 km (69 mi) down, about 272 km (169 mi) from the nearest plate boundary on the surface. Quakes this deep happen inside old ocean plate that has sunk far into the mantle at a subduction zone, long after it dove beneath its neighbor. Their great depth spreads the shaking over a wide area but usually keeps it gentle at the surface.
The red lines on the map are plate boundaries.
How strong was it?
Magnitude is logarithmic: each whole step releases about 32 times more energy. This magnitude 4.5 released roughly the energy of 85 tons of TNT. That is about 5.6 times the energy of a magnitude 4.0, a quake people nearby feel but that rarely causes damage. The strongest earthquake ever recorded, magnitude 9.5 in Chile in 1960, released about 32,000,000 times more than this one.
Aftershocks
In the first 2 hours after it, USGS recorded no smaller earthquakes of magnitude 2.5 or more within 100 km (62 mi).
Outside the United States, USGS mainly lists quakes of about magnitude 4 and up, so smaller aftershocks there are undercounted.
Earthquake history here
Before this earthquake, USGS had recorded 121 earthquakes of magnitude 6 or larger within 300 km (186 mi) since 1900. The strongest:
- M8.2 · 121 km SSE of San Pedro de Atacama, ChileDecember 9, 1950
- M8.0 · 36 km NNE of Antofagasta, ChileJuly 30, 1995
- M7.8 · 102 km ENE of Iquique, ChileJune 13, 2005
Official details, updates and the shaking map: USGS event page.
See every earthquake on November 7, 2026 or earthquakes by day.
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