Copper: Humanity’s first and most important future metal
Millions of feet of copper wiring will be required for strengthening the world’s power grids, and hundreds of thousands of tonnes more are needed to build wind and solar farms.
Chile’s state-owned mining company Codelco, the world’s largest copper producer, reports normal operations following an early morning earthquake northeast of the port city of Valparaiso and which registered 6.7 on the Richter scale.
The company did evacuate its smelter in Ventanas — located 164 km from Santiago and approximately 50 km from the quake-stroken zone — as a precaution, reports Chilean newspaper El Mercurio. But Codelco said its operations were not impacted by Tuesday’s quake, as did global miner Anglo American.
There are also no reports of damage to other mines in the country, even though the quake led to preventive evacuations and power interruptions in the affected zone, and was felt as far away as Mendoza and Córdoba in Argentina.
The minute-long quake occurred 50 minutes after midnight. Two people are reported dead of heart attacks, but there are no reports of widespread damage to infrastructure or major services.
This is the second quake in Chile in as many months. On March 21, the country experienced a 7.1 quake in the south.
Prone to earthquakes, Chile was hammered by a massive 8.8 magnitude quake on February 27, 2010 that ravaged the south-center of the country, devastating industries and triggering tsunamis, in a disaster that killed more than 500 people.
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With the contribution of Suzanne Soto, owner of Si! Corporate Communications, a Greater Toronto Area company providing public relations services in both English and Spanish.
