The Peru-Bolivia border earthquake of August 15, 1963

abstract The seismograms of the deep focus Peru-Bolivia border earthquake of August 15, 1963 reveal the presence of a number of conspicuous phases occurring within 15 seconds of the first P onset. These phases cannot be explained on the basis of known travel-time curves. Accordingly, the earthquake is interpreted to have occurred in a series of jerks during the course of fault propagation, or in other words it is composed of multiple events. Only one of these events, following the first event, at which the amplitude of the recorded motion becomes suddenly very large, has been located in this study. The focal mechanism solution of this earthquake has been determined from the P wave first motion and amplitude data. Consideration of the direction of rupture propagation determined from the multiple event analysis makes it possible to identify the fault plane in the mechanism solution. The parameters of the fault plane, length and speed of rupture between the two events have been determined.