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The population of southern Calabria and Messina clearly felt an earthquake of magnitude 3.9 and that lasted a few seconds. The earth shook at 11:57 AM with its epicenter 8 kilometers northeast of Roccaforte del Greco (RC) and its hypocenter 18 kilometers deep. According to the INGV (National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology), the earthquake was clearly felt by the population, especially in the centers of Roccaforte del Greco, Samo, San Luca, Sant’Agata del Bianco, Caraffa del Bianco, Casignana, Bova, Staiti , Ferruzzano, Condofuri, Bagaladi, San Lorenzo, Bruzzano, Delianuova, Scido, Santo Stefano in Aspromonte, Africo.
Calabria, a region with high seismic risk
As Civil Protection explains, Calabria is a region with a high seismic risk, already in the past the scene of catastrophic events that have caused the depopulation and abandonment of many towns in the interior, some of which are also affected by today’s earthquake: “Calabria has a very high seismic risk (due to the frequency and intensity of the phenomena that occurred in historical times), a very high vulnerability (due to the fragility of the building, infrastructure, industrial, productive and service heritage) and a very high exposure (due to population density and the presence of a historical, artistic and monumental heritage in areas affected by active faults) ”, Civil Protection explains.“ Everyone (or almost) is familiar with the ‘Theory of Plate Tectonics ‘, according to which the continents are not stationary but move and constitute a set of rigid plates that “float” on a plastic horizon. Continents can move closer to or farther from each other. At the contact boundaries between continents rocks break apart. Calabria is so exposed to geological risks because it is located exactly along the contact zone between Europe and Africa that they approach at a speed of 7 millimeters / year: in other words, Calabria is crushed by the great grip constituted by the plate Africana (to the south) and by the European plate (to the north). This vice causes Calabrian rocks to break along these giant fractures, tens to hundreds of kilometers and generally up to 10-15 km deep, what geologists call faults. “
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