The Wire

A two-metre tsunami has hit the Chilean coast after an 8.2 earthquake in the Pacific Ocean this morning. The quake was centred 86km north-west of Iquique in northern Chile. Reports so far are of five deaths as well as property damage and looting is already occurring. The tsunami comes in the same week as government officials have been sentenced over their failure to act during the 2010 tsunami which killed 528 people.

However, overall impressions are that this time the Pacific Tsunami Warning System worked as designed, detecting the earthquake off Chile and transmitting the warning to national authorities, who have developed a better disaster response plan to get the warning to locals. Image: Pacific Tsunami Warning Centre