Peru issues tsunami alert after New Zealand quake

Peru issued a tsunami warning for its coast but no evacuation order Thursday, after a cluster of powerful South Pacific earthquakes.

The country’s National Emergency Operations Center reported “a tsunami alert on the Peruvian coast,” with the arrival of a wave train “estimated during the early morning of March 5.”

The largest in the cluster of quakes struck around 1,000 kilometers off the New Zealand coast at 1928 GMT, the US Geological Survey said.

The 8.1-magnitude quake followed earlier tremors in the same region measuring 7.4 and 7.3, in an unusually strong cluster even for the Pacific ring of fire, where the Earth’s tectonic plates collide.

Peru’s emergency center said a “tsunami alert is issued after a major earthquake so that the population can prepare to evacuate to safe higher ground if so determined by the authorities.”