Averías is a municipality and village in the General Taboada department, province of

Santiago del Estero Province Santiago del Estero (), also known simply as Santiago, is a Provinces of Argentina, province in the north of Argentina. Neighboring provinces, clockwise from the north, are Salta Province, Salta, Chaco Province, Chaco, Santa Fe Province, Santa Fe, ...

Argentina Argentina, officially the Argentine Republic, is a country in the southern half of South America. It covers an area of , making it the List of South American countries by area, second-largest country in South America after Brazil, the fourt ...

. It is located approximately 229 km from the provincial capital city of

Santiago del Estero Santiago del Estero (, Spanish for ''Saint-James-Upon-The-Lagoon'') is the capital of Santiago del Estero Province in northern Argentina. It has a population of 252,192 inhabitants, () making it the twelfth largest city in the country, with a sur ...

Population

Averías had 371 inhabitants in 2010 (

INDEC The National Institute of Statistics and Censuses (, mostly known for its acronym INDEC) is an Argentine decentralized public body that operates within the Ministry of Economy, which leads all official statistical activities carried out in the co ...

, 2010), a 129% increase from the 162 inhabitants it had during the last census in 2001 (

, 2001).

Earthquakes in the Santiago del Estero Province

On 1 January 2011, and on 21 February and 2 September of the same year, several large areas were the epicentres of earthquakes with levels 7.0, 5.9, and 6.9 respectively, on the

Richter Scale The Richter scale (), also called the Richter magnitude scale, Richter's magnitude scale, and the Gutenberg–Richter scale, is a measure of the strength of earthquakes, developed by Charles Richter in collaboration with Beno Gutenberg, and pr ...

. None of these caused damage or had victims since they were registered at depths of 600km; however, the telluric movements ended up shaking tall buildings in several provinces, including the

city of Buenos Aires Buenos Aires, controlled by the government of the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires, is the Capital city, capital and largest city of Argentina. It is located on the southwest of the Río de la Plata. Buenos Aires is classified as an Alpha− glob ...

Seismicity

The seismicity of the Santiago del Estero area is frequent and of low intensity. It has a seismic silence of medium-to-serious earthquakes every 40 years. On 4 July 1817 a Level 7.0 (according to the Richter Scale) earthquake occurred (the 1817 Santiago del Estero earthquake). Very serious damage was reported in the centre and north of the province, where houses collapsed and cracks appeared in the ground. The tremors lasted about a week. A scale level of VIII was estimated on the Mercalli Scale. Liquefaction occurred with large quantities of sand in cracks of up to 1 metre in width and over 2 metres in depth. In some of the houses above these cracks, the ground was covered in more than 10cm of sand. Although geological activity has been happening since prehistory, the

earthquake An earthquakealso called a quake, tremor, or tembloris the shaking of the Earth's surface resulting from a sudden release of energy in the lithosphere that creates seismic waves. Earthquakes can range in intensity, from those so weak they ...

on 20 March 1861 set an important milestone in the history of Argentinean seismic events, since it was the strongest ever registered and documented in the country. Since then, the policy of the successive provincial and municipal governments have been very cautious and have restricted building codes - but it was only after the

1944 San Juan earthquake The 1944 San Juan earthquake took place on 15 January in the province of San Juan, in the center-west area of Argentina, a region highly prone to seismic events. This moderate to strong earthquake (estimated moment magnitudes range from 6.7 ...

on 15 January that the provincial governments truly understood the severity of the region's seismicity.

References

External links

Federal website

Provincial website

{{DEFAULTSORT:Averias Populated places in Santiago del Estero Province