At the bottom of the Eastern Pacific Ocean, the Nazca plate is being forced under the South American plate. On May 22, 1960, the stress built up by years of increasing compressional force between the rocks of one plate and another was released by fracturing rocks. The force of the sudden movement along a roughly 560–620-mile (900–1,000-km) stretch of the Nazca plate pushed part of the leading edge of the South American plate upward. The shock of this upward thrust also pushed the water above the plate boundary upward, creating a wave that moved outward in all directions.
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