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LIMA (AFP / Reuters) - split big glacier and plunged into a lake in Peru, causing tsunami waves as high as 23 feet, sweep over three people and destroying the water treatment plant to serve 60,000 local residents, local officials said Monday.

The chunk of ice fell into the lake in the Andes, on Sunday, near the town Carhuaz, about 320Km north of Lima, Peru. Three people are feared buried by rubble.

Investigators said the pieces of ice from glaciers Hualcan measuring 500 meters by 200 meters.

"The fall in the lake caused a tsunami, which passed the 23-meter-high dam lake. So the tsunami as high as 23 meters high," said glacier expert Peruvian Institute of Mining Engineers, Patricio Vaderrama.

Local authorities evacuated residents in the canyon hills, fearing further damage.

That is the real signs that the glaciers began to disappear in Peru, where 70 percent of the world's ice field. Scientists say warmer temperatures cause the ice to melt within 20 years.

In 1970, an earthquake occurs causing avalanches of ice, rocks, and mud in the mountains of Huascaran, which buried the town of Yungay, not far from Carhuaz, killing more than 20,000 people living below the tallest peak in Peru, which is 6768 meters above sea level .