Qualla: 2016 Ecuador earthquake

2016 Ecuador earthquake: Introduction

Sat, 18 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit MaxWyss, CC BY-SA 4.0. Saturday evenings in coastal Ecuador have a particular rhythm. Families eat late. Restaurants in Manta fill. The shops of the Tarqui commercial district do their last sales of the day. On April 16, 2016, at 18:58 local time, the rhythm broke. A magnitude 7.8 earthquake ruptured the Nazca-South American plate boundary about 27 kilometres off the coast, near the little town of Muisne in Esmeraldas Province. Much of Pedernales, closest to the epicenter, simply collapsed. In Manta, the heart of the Tarqui shopping district fell in on itself. Within hours, President Rafael Correa declared a state of emergency. By the time the counting finished, at least 676 people had died and more than 27,000 were injured.

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Image: MaxWyss | CC BY-SA 4.0

2016 Ecuador earthquake: A Quake Long Expected

Sat, 18 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Grundkarte Milenioscuro, Relief Alexrk2, CC BY-SA 3.0. Seismologists were not surprised that a large earthquake struck this stretch of coast. They were surprised by when. The Ecuador-Colombia subduction zone had been rupturing in segments since the great 1906 earthquake: off Manabí in 1942, near Esmeraldas in 1958, off Tumaco in 1979...

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Image: Grundkarte Milenioscuro, Relief Alexrk2 | CC BY-SA 3.0

2016 Ecuador earthquake: Pedernales

Sat, 18 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Agencia de Noticias ANDES, CC BY-SA 2.0. Pedernales sits about 35 kilometres south-southwest of the 2016 epicenter. Its mayor, Gabriel Alcivar, told reporters in the hours after the shaking that his town had been leveled. He was not exaggerating much. Hotels collapsed on guests. Concrete apartment blocks pancaked into t...

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Image: Agencia de Noticias ANDES | CC BY-SA 2.0

2016 Ecuador earthquake: Manta's Tarqui District

Sat, 18 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Agencia de Noticias ANDES, CC BY-SA 2.0. The worst urban damage in a major city occurred in Manta, about 140 kilometres south of the epicenter, in its central commercial district called Tarqui. Tarqui was Manta's shopping district, its restaurant zone, its weekend crowd. When the shaking started, buildings along its nar...

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Image: Agencia de Noticias ANDES | CC BY-SA 2.0

2016 Ecuador earthquake: The Response

Sat, 18 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Agencia de Noticias ANDES, CC BY-SA 2.0. President Correa mobilized roughly 10,000 military personnel and 3,500 police officers for rescue and recovery. Over 26,000 survivors were displaced to shelters. The Ecuadorian state - already under financial stress from a commodity-price collapse - calculated damages at around $...

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Image: Agencia de Noticias ANDES | CC BY-SA 2.0

2016 Ecuador earthquake: What Came Out Later

Sat, 18 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Agencia de Noticias ANDES, CC BY-SA 2.0. Reconstruction dragged. The pace of rebuilding frustrated survivors whose towns had been flattened. Years later, in a story that eventually reached a courtroom, Jorge Glas - Correa's vice president during the earthquake and the official placed in charge of coordinating the recons...

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Image: Agencia de Noticias ANDES | CC BY-SA 2.0