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The quake occurred in one of the most seismically active regions in the world, where the Nazca tectonic plate is shoving itself beneath the South American plate.

A 1939 quake in Chile killed 28,000 people and in 1960, a magnitude-9.5 quake the strongest recorded in the 20th century killed 5,700 people. On June 13, 2005, a magnitude-7.8 quake near Tarapaca in northern Chile killed 11 people and left thousands homeless.