Zimpapers Logo

ROME. — The earthquakes that have buffeted central Italy over the last two months could continue in a devastating domino effect with one large quake leading to another along the central Apennine fault system, a leading seismologist warned yesterday.An earthquake measuring 6,6 according to the US Geological Survey struck yesterday in the same region where a 6,2 quake on August 24 killed 297 people. In between there have been thousands of smaller tremors, including a 6,1 quake on Wednesday.

The latest earthquake caused no known casualties, but was the strongest to hit Italy, one of the world’s most seismically active countries, since 1980.

Gianluca Valensise, a seismologist at Italy’s National Institute for Geophysics and Vulcanology, told Reuters there was a “geodynamic link” between the deadly August earthquake and all those that have followed.

Italy’s Apennine mountains that run from the Liguria region in the northwest to the southern island of Sicily are dominated by a chain of faults in the earth’s crust, each one averaging about 10-20 kilometres in length.

“An earthquake measuring 6 or larger creates stresses that are redistributed across adjacent faults and can cause them to rupture and this is probably what we have seen since August,” Valensise said.

“This process can continue indefinitely, with one big quake weakening a sister fault in a domino process that can cover hundreds of kilometres, in principle.” — Reuters