Earthquakes near Cuenca through history

It was also the deadliest: NOAA records 40,000 deaths for it. NOAA’s list of significant earthquakes has 13 here, back to 1641. NOAA records deaths in 6 of the events here, 46,524 in all. The latest on NOAA’s list is a magnitude 6.8 on March 18, 2023 (14 km NNW of Baláo, Ecuador). NOAA’s record here begins on January 10, 1641 with an earthquake. 9 of the 13 significant earthquakes NOAA lists here came before 1927.

• March 18, 2023Earthquake · M 6.814 km NNW of Baláo, Ecuador · 15 deaths (NOAA)USGS · NOAA NCEI · Wikipedia
• September 28, 1906Earthquake · M 7.9NOAA NCEI
• February 4, 1797Earthquake · M 8.3 (est.)Riobamba, Quito, Cuzco; Peru; Colombia · 40,000 deaths (NOAA)NOAA NCEI · Wikipedia
• January 10, 1641Earthquake · M 7.6 (est.)NOAA NCEI

• An event counts for Cuenca when it began within 100 km of its centre, or 200 km for an earthquake of magnitude 7 or more. Damage can reach further.
• USGS counts here start at magnitude 6: the catalogue’s smaller quakes thin out going back, where few instruments listened.
• NOAA lists significant events only: earthquakes that killed, did about $1 million of damage, reached magnitude 7.5 or intensity X, or raised a tsunami, and eruptions and tsunamis by like measures. Magnitudes before 1900 are its estimates from written accounts.
• Deaths are NOAA’s total for each event, wherever people died, its tsunami and fires included. A tsunami counts the dead its runup records give for this place: NOAA’s total for a tsunami includes its source quake’s.
• A tsunami from elsewhere counts where one of its runups killed or rose a metre or more.
• Counted to October 19, 2026, as is the map. The last 30 days ask USGS again.

How the layers work, where their data comes from and what they can’t tell you: Earthquakes, live, The world through history