Wednesday, May 11, 2011

Earthquake Predicted In Rome Happens in Spain

This is totally wierd .. but we live in very strange times .. I saw today that people in Rome were leaving the city for a few days because of rumours of an earthquake. Headlines were: "Italians Flee Rome Over Earthquake Prediction" ... and this was apparently due to a prediction made many years ago by a planetary seismologist, Raffaele Bendandi, who died 30 years ago.

Apparently, Raffaele Bendandi (strangely) predicted in 1915 that on May 11, 2011 a huge Earthquake would hit Rome. The people there are giving his prediction a couple of days to be sure as some vacate Rome for two or three days, just in case. However, two quakes in succession hit close to the the South coast of Spain May 11, 2011.

The first earthquake, magnitude 4.5 hit the small town of Lorca, in the region of Murcia and two hours later this tremor was followed by a stronger 5.2, causing extensive damage. Earthquake Report are a good source for information.

Due to the shallow depth of the quakes [10 kilometers] the shaking and the damage was greater. EMSC reported a third afterquake in Southern Spain magnitude 4.5 with three smaller tremors over the last five hours.

Reports say that up to 10,000 people in Lorca have been displaced due to the extensive structural damage done by the shallow quake. This could be part of the series of quakes in the Mediterranean area over the past few weeks.

The Southern Coast of Spain is an Alpine fold and thrust belt called the Beltics and it looks like all the recent quakes across the Mediterranean are under pressure from the African Plate as it pushes up. In the same time period Southern Italy and Sicily experienced minor quakes of 2.0 to 2.6 - but the higher magnitude hit Southern Spain some 50 kilometers from Murcia.

Fortunately, Spain's Nuclear Power Plants are way up the North.