At least five people were killed after an earthquake struck Peru’s Junín region on the night of July 18, according to preliminary reports published the following day.
El Comercio reported the tremor at magnitude 5.1 and placed it in Chupaca province. Its initial account said homes collapsed, infrastructure was damaged and hundreds of families were affected. The newspaper’s headline reported 32 people injured and more than 300 left affected by the disaster.
A separate report from notiPerú also gave a preliminary magnitude of 5.1 and said no fewer than five people had died. It described the location more broadly as southwestern Peru.
The two reports therefore supported the same initial magnitude and minimum death toll. The supplied evidence did not establish the higher magnitude or different casualty figures contained in the event’s discovery note, so those figures are not used here.
The timing spans two calendar dates: El Comercio said the earthquake occurred during the night of Saturday, July 18, while the earliest casualty reports cited here were published on Sunday, July 19. July 19 is treated as the historical event date for this report, not as a publication date.
Information remained limited in the first reports. They did not provide a supported final casualty assessment, detailed locations for every damaged structure or a final count of displaced residents. The death and injury figures should consequently be read as preliminary rather than as a completed assessment.
What was clear from both accounts was that the earthquake had fatal consequences. The structural damage described in Chupaca included collapsed housing and harm to infrastructure, with effects extending across hundreds of families. Further official inspection would have been needed to determine the complete human and physical toll.
