Qualla: 1986 João Câmara earthquake https://qualla.com/1986-joao-camara-earthquake en-us © 2026 Bendyline Mon, 20 Jul 2026 10:21:09 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_m/7/p/n/3/1986-joao-camara-earthquake-wp/hero-small.webp Qualla: 1986 João Câmara earthquake https://qualla.com/1986-joao-camara-earthquake 1986 João Câmara earthquake: Introduction https://qualla.com/1986-joao-camara-earthquake/ Photo credit Brazil_location_map.svg: NordNordWest derivative work: Виктор В (talk), CC BY-SA 3.0. At 02:19 on the morning of 30 November 1986, the ground in João Câmara moved. It was a magnitude 5.1 earthquake — not catastrophic by the standards of the Pacific Rim, but felt across northeastern Brazil, from Natal to Mossoró, in a country that almost never expects to feel anything at all. Before the sun came up, the walls of the town's church had partly collapsed; more than four thousand houses were damaged or destroyed; the local hospital was in ruins. More than ten thousand people left their homes that week — some because the homes were gone, others because they feared landslides or another shock. Brazil had not experienced a tremor like this in living memory.

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Image: Brazil_location_map.svg: NordNordWest derivative work: Виктор В (talk) | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Sat, 18 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/7/p/n/3/1986-joao-camara-earthquake-wp/7pn3-1986-jo-o-c-mara-earthquake-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full 1986 João Câmara earthquake: The Swarm https://qualla.com/1986-joao-camara-earthquake/ Photo credit Agência Nacional/Empresa Brasileira de Notícias, Public domain. The 5.1 was the main act, but it was not alone. It was the apex of an earthquake swarm that had begun on 5 August 1986, when a magnitude 3.3 was strongly felt in João Câmara, a town of about 22,000 people in the state of Rio Grande do Norte. More 3.0-magnitude events followed thr...

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Image: Agência Nacional/Empresa Brasileira de Notícias | Public domain

]]> Sat, 18 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/7/p/n/3/1986-joao-camara-earthquake-wp/7pn3-1986-jo-o-c-mara-earthquake-the-swarm.mp3 0:06 2 full 1986 João Câmara earthquake: Deep Time Below a Small Town https://qualla.com/1986-joao-camara-earthquake/ Photo credit Agência Nacional/Empresa Brasileira de Notícias, Public domain. Brazil is not supposed to shake. The country sits squarely in the interior of the South American plate, far from the Andean subduction zone to the west. But a continental interior is not motionless. Much of Brazil lies over the Brazilian Shield, a province of metamorphic rock kni...

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Image: Agência Nacional/Empresa Brasileira de Notícias | Public domain

]]> Sat, 18 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/7/p/n/3/1986-joao-camara-earthquake-wp/7pn3-1986-jo-o-c-mara-earthquake-deep-time-below-a-small-town.mp3 0:06 3 full 1986 João Câmara earthquake: A Town of Timber and Concrete https://qualla.com/1986-joao-camara-earthquake/ Photo credit Agência Nacional/Empresa Brasileira de Notícias, Public domain. What happened above ground depended on how the ground had been built upon. Most of João Câmara's older houses were made of brick, stone, or sun-dried adobe, with poor mortar and tiled roofs. The 5.1 shook these hardest: cracks opened in walls, roof tiles slid to the ground, whole...

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Image: Agência Nacional/Empresa Brasileira de Notícias | Public domain

]]> Sat, 18 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/7/p/n/3/1986-joao-camara-earthquake-wp/7pn3-1986-jo-o-c-mara-earthquake-a-town-of-timber-and-concrete.mp3 0:06 4 full 1986 João Câmara earthquake: The People Who Left https://qualla.com/1986-joao-camara-earthquake/ Photo credit Agência Nacional/Empresa Brasileira de Notícias, Public domain. More than ten thousand people were displaced by the swarm. Most of them were not injured, but they were frightened — by the relentless rhythm of aftershocks, by the cracks in their walls, by the persistent possibility of a landslide on a hillside that had never moved before. Fami...

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Image: Agência Nacional/Empresa Brasileira de Notícias | Public domain

]]> Sat, 18 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/7/p/n/3/1986-joao-camara-earthquake-wp/7pn3-1986-jo-o-c-mara-earthquake-the-people-who-left.mp3 0:06 5 full 1986 João Câmara earthquake: A Quiet Country Listens https://qualla.com/1986-joao-camara-earthquake/ Photo credit Agência Nacional/Empresa Brasileira de Notícias, Public domain. The João Câmara earthquake changed how Brazil thought about its own geology. UFRN's seismology laboratory, Labsis, has become a regional centre for studying the Borborema's earthquakes, and a new generation of seismic networks has been deployed across northeastern Brazil since th...

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Image: Agência Nacional/Empresa Brasileira de Notícias | Public domain

]]> Sat, 18 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/7/p/n/3/1986-joao-camara-earthquake-wp/7pn3-1986-jo-o-c-mara-earthquake-a-quiet-country-listens.mp3 0:06 6 full