SANTIAGO, Chile — A magnitude-7.1 earthquake struck central Chile on Sunday night, the strongest and longest that many people said they had felt since a quake devastated the area two years ago. Some people were injured by falling ceiling material, but there were no reports of major damage.
The quake hit at 7:30 p.m. about 16 miles north-northwest of Talca, a city of more than 200,000, where residents said the shaking lasted about a minute.
Buildings swayed in Chile’s capital, Santiago, 136 miles to the north, and people living along a 480-mile stretch of Chile’s central coast were briefly warned to head for higher ground.
Residents were particularly alarmed in Constitucion, where much of the coastal downtown at the mouth of a river was obliterated by the tsunami caused by the 8.8-magnitude quake in 2010.
Many neighborhoods in Santiago and other cities were left partly or totally without electrical power. Phone service collapsed because of heavy traffic.
“There are some injuries but nothing serious,” said Interior Minister Rodrigo Hinzpeter, who was serving as acting leader while President Sebastian Pinera was on tour in Asia.
Hinzpeter said authorities were conducting a thorough survey of the affected regions to look for damage.
The national emergency office called off a tsunami warning for most of the central coast Sunday after an analysis showed the quake wasn’t the type to provoke killer waves.
But the alert was restored for the area closest to the epicenter after police noticed the ocean had retreated about 130 feet from the shore in the towns of Iloca and Duao. A sharp outsurge of surf sometimes is followed by a tsunami.
The government in 2010 said there would be no tsunami just before huge waves struck after the quake, killing 156 of the 524 victims of that disaster.
In Parral, 230 miles south of the capital, Mayor Israel Urrutia said a 74-year-old woman died of a heart attack during Sunday’s quake.
Front Section, Pages 6 on 03/26/2012