document: Scientists and engineers in Chile , which has the distinction of playing host to the largest earthquake ever measured , are waiting with serious interest reports on the Oct. 17 San Francisco earthquake . Measured by magnitude , `` Chile is the world 's most seismic country , '' said building engineer Elias Arze , president of the Chilean Seismology and Anti-Seismic Engineering Assn. . The San Francisco quake measuring 7.1 was comparable to the earthquake that struck Santiago and central Chile in March , 1985 , killing 180 people and toppling some 70,000 homes . And like California , Chile is still waiting for another `` big one , '' an earthquake of magnitude 8 or more . Both areas are situated along the Pacific `` ring of fire , '' the huge faults created by the collision of massive plates of the earth 's surface . `` Chile , along with Alaska , are the sites that have had the biggest seismic occurrences , '' said Prof. Edgar Kausel , chairman of the Geophysics Department at the University of Chile . Chile has about 2,270 miles of its coast along the earthquake fault between the Nazca plate and the South American plate . The frequency of earth movements prompts Chileans to say that every president has at least one major earthquake during the traditional six-year term in office . The long history of earth movements in Chile has led to a sharing of information with U.S. and Japanese scientists and engineers over the behavior of the earth and of buildings during earthquakes . Arze said after the 1985 earthquake , teams of foreign experts arrived in Chile to study the effects of the earthquake on buildings . `` Our buildings performed very well , '' he said . Since earthquake building codes were implemented in Chile in the 1930s , only two engineered buildings have collapsed , he said . Older buildings have been replaced over the years . `` We have so many earthquakes in Chile it has cleaned up our construction , '' Arze said . Chilean earthquakes tend to be sharper and last longer than those of California , leading to differences in building design . While California engineers have promoted a flexible design of steel framed buildings that allows them to swing in a quake , Chileans opt for stiffer construction . Chilean buildings are of reinforced concrete with more inside walls . `` Our buildings move little compared to -LRB- those of -RRB- the Americans , '' said Arze . Descriptions of earthquakes in Chile date back to Spanish settlers in 1575 . In an 1835 journal entry about a stop the ship the Beagle made in Chile , scientist Charles Darwin described an earthquake he experienced . Just a few months before the 1906 earthquake in San Francisco , a quake measuring 8.5 struck the central Chilean coast , destroying the city of Valparaiso . On May 21 , 1960 , an earthquake measuring 9.5 struck an area about 600 miles long in southern Chile , releasing energy nearly 1,000 times that of this year 's San Francisco quake . Parts of the coast stretching south from the city of Concepcion , 325 miles south of Santiago , dropped nine feet . `` It was the biggest registered in the history of seismic instrumention , '' said Kausel . About 5,000 people were killed in the sparsely populated area , most of them when the coastline dropped . A tsunami , a tidal wave created by the earthquake , killed others and caused considerable damage in Japan and Hawaii .
extractive_keyphrases: chilean earthquakes chile seismic country chilean seismology san francisco earthquake considerable damage massive plates major earthquake earth movements chilean buildings