Andalusia: Hundreds of people take to the streets for fear of the earthquakes in Granada
"Several earthquakes make
Granada
tremble
again tonight. I take care of the concern of thousands of people. It is time to maintain serenity and follow the indications of the emergency services. We hope that they will soon return to normality", has written this At dawn the President of the Government,
Pedro Sánchez
, on his Twitter account.
A call for serenity, like that of other authorities, after hundreds of Granadans abandoned their homes and took to the streets for fear of the
earthquakes
that
Granada has
suffered since early December
.
More than
280
registered
earthquakes
and
hundreds of other aftershocks
since December 1 have been suffering the metropolitan region of Granada and its surroundings.
Most of them mild, with intensities between 2 and 3 degrees of magnitude, with the exception of the one registered on January 23 in
Santa Fe
(Granada) that exceeded the
magnitude of 4
, those registered this Tuesday practically consecutive of
magnitude 4.3, 4,2 and 4
and epicenter in municipalities of the Granada metropolitan area and the more than 200 aftershocks of last night.
The people of Granada are scared.
Too many days and too many earthquakes
.
Pedro Martínez
, the mayor of
Artafe
, one of the most affected towns, pointed out last night that "the whole town" is on the street, with numerous cases of
"people who have taken the car and have gone out into the open"
as a result of the " very strong "last earthquakes.
Why so many earthquakes
According to the Junta de Andalucía, Granada has passed to the pre-emergency phase of the Emergency
Plan for Seismic Risk
, a level characterized by the instrumental monitoring and study of the phenomenon as well as by information measures for organs, authorities and the population.
What is happening in Granada for so much seismic activity?
The Andalusian Institute of Geophysics and Seismic Disaster Prevention of the University of Granada has attributed the earthquakes of recent days to the
sinking suffered by the Granada Basin
, on whose edge are the faults that cause them, and has included them in a series it started "long ago".
Experts consider these earthquakes "small", not even moderate, although they recognize that they
cause great social alarm because they are very superficial
and occur near towns that are densely populated.
For its part, the
National Geographic Institute
(IGN), which has made a report on the seismic activity in Atarfe-Santa Fe (Granada) detailing all the earthquakes recorded in almost these two months, ensures that "registered seismicity is common in this area , which is framed within the
central sector of the Betic mountain ranges
, one of the regions with the highest seismic activity in the Iberian Peninsula, the result of the convergence between
the African and Eurasian plates
".
This area is characterized by the occurrence of "numerous" shallow earthquakes of low to moderate magnitude, and occasionally with significant intensity.
But it must also be taken into account that there is a
certain seismicity at intermediate depths
that extends into the western part of the Alboran Sea and, occasionally, earthquakes at depths of more than 600 km with an epicenter in the province of
Granada
"whose origin is possibly related to he
tectonic history of the Gibraltar arc
", although the IGN warns that" there is no unanimous agreement "on it.
A seismic series that began in 2020
A conclusion shared by researchers from the Department of
Geodynamics of the University of Granada
and the
Andalusian Institute of Earth Sciences
, who have attributed these earthquakes to the continuous approximation of 4 to 5 millimeters per year between the Eurasian and African plates.
The IGN report on this seismic series shows that since the beginning of December 2020, a series of surface earthquakes have been registered in the northwest of the city of Granada, in the surroundings of the towns of
Atarfe,
Pinos Puente
and
Santa Fe
.
Map of seismic danger of Spain, of the southern peninsular region.
The series was reactivated at the end of January 2021 and last Saturday the 23rd
the 4.4 magnitude was registered
with an epicenter in Santa Fe, which was "
strongly felt
in numerous nearby towns, as well as in the city of Granada, even to feel in some localities in the provinces of Malaga and Jaén ".
Major earthquakes have occurred in the province of Granada throughout history, with the Granada basin being the most seismically active.
The oldest on record occurred
in 1431
south of Granada, which had a
macrosismic intensity of VIII-IX
, "seriously damaging", according to the Institute's intensity tables, and which caused great damage to the Alhambra.
Or the most virulent that of 1884 in
Arenas del Rey
, which reached an intensity of IX-X, "very destructive", which left 839 fatalities.
At the moment, of all the earthquakes registered since last December 1, the IGN places eight of them -those with an intensity greater than 3- with a macroseismic intensity between III - "weak" - and VI - "slightly harmful".
"Weak" or "mildly damaging" earthquakes
Earthquakes
classified in III
are weak earthquakes.
The earthquake is felt by some inside buildings.
People at rest feel a sway or slight shaking and do not cause damage.
Those
classified in VI
, such as those produced this Tuesday and the 23rd, are considered "mildly damaging" earthquakes.
These are earthquakes felt by most inside buildings and by many outside.
Some people lose their balance and many get scared and run outside, as happened last night.
And damage to buildings can occur.
"From the tectonic point of view, the Betics are currently subjected to compressive stresses (...) In fact,
the epicentral zone is crossed by a system
of various parallel faults of a normal type with Northwest-Southeast orientation, among which the faults of
Atarfe
,
Pinos Puente
,
Alitaje
and
Santa Fe stand out
, all of them with a length of around 10 km ", indicates the IGN.
Despite the high seismic intensity in the area, experts
call for calm
.
The recent seismicity that affects this area of the
Granada
metropolitan area
is characterized by earthquakes of small to moderate magnitudes that occur during discontinuous and recurring periods, the Department of Geodynamics of the University of Granada reported in a statement.
According to the criteria of The Trust Project
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