The quake happened at around 3am ET early Sunday. The earthquake struck at a depth of around 6 miles according to the US Geological Survey. The tremor also caused a number of aftershocks according to the European-Mediterranean Seismological Center. There have currently been no reports of damage or injuries.
But people were woken, as the tremor rocked the nation.
Any earthquake which has a magnitude of more than 6 is categorised as ’Strong’ on the Richter Scale, which measures earthquake strength.
Ecuador lies along the Pacific’s so-called ‘Ring of Fire’.
The ‘Ring of Fire’ is surrounded by oceanic trenches and volcanic arcs, making it highly susceptible to earthquakes and volcanic eruptions.
Approximately 90 percent of the world’s earthquakes take place in the region.
The belt runs from New Zealand, through South East Asia and Japan and along the entire western coastline of the Americas.
The ring is the result of tectonic plates – huge slabs of the earth’s crust which fit together like a puzzle to make up the earth’s surface.
The plates are not fixed but constantly move on top of a layer of solid and molten (liquid) rock, called the earth’s mantle.
Sometimes, these plates collide, move apart, or slide against each other, which results in an earthquake.
During times of increased seismic activity, talk of the ‘Big One’ often increases.
The Big One is a hypothetical earthquake of a magnitude 8.0 or greater.
The Big One, according to the hypothesis, will occur along the San Andreas Fault, a 750-mile-long tectonic boundary through California.
A study published in 2006 in the journal Nature found the San Andreas fault has reached a sufficient stress level for an earthquake of magnitude greater than 7.0 to occur.
The paper concluded: “The information available suggests that the fault is ready for the next big earthquake but exactly when the triggering will happen and when the earthquake will occur we cannot tell.
“It could be tomorrow or it could be 10 years or more from now.”