NU Online News Service, Jan. 3, 3:18 p.m. EST

Insured losses are expected to be light from a 7.1 magnitude earthquake that struck the central coastal area of Chile on Sunday.

Catastrophe modeling firm AIR Worldwide said the quake struck about 43 miles northwest of the city of Temuco, and about 62 miles south of the city of Concepcion, where an 8.8 magnitude quake last year caused between $5.5- and $8.5 billion in insured losses.

AIR said Chile's long history of damaging earthquakes has resulted in a strict building code, "which is generally well enforced in modern cities like Temuco." However, many buildings in the country's rural locations, including those in certain parts of the Araucan?a Region, are old structures made of adobe; most of these do not adhere to the country's building code and are characterized by poor seismic performance.

Damage to these older adobe structures was not reported Sunday, AIR said.

"Yesterday's earthquake, a typical subduction zone earthquake, occurred on the subduction interface between the Nazca and South America tectonic plates, about [62 miles] south of the southern end of the rupture caused by the Maule event last year," said Bingming Shen-Tu, principal scientist at AIR Worldwide. "The segment of the subduction zone involved yesterday was previously ruptured in 1960, during the magnitude 9.5 Valdivia earthquake."

Special Reports /

Latest Chile Quake Not Expected To Cause High Insured Losses

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