Spain: Earthquake rocks Lorca, Murcia, killing 10

[peace frog]

At least 10 people were killed after a magnitude-5.2 earthquake toppled several buildings in southern Spain near the town of Lorca, officials say.

The quake struck at a depth of just 1km (0.6 miles), some 120km south-west of Alicante, at 1847 (1647 GMT), the US Geological Survey reported.

Lines of cars lay crushed under tonnes of rubble and a hospital was evacuated as a precaution.

The quake followed a 4.4-magnitude tremor about two hours earlier.

It is not clear how many people were injured, although Spanish media say there are dozens.

Military deployed...........

 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-13368599

[Ullan]

Knowing the area fairly well, I'd say it's the old buildings that are mostly the cause of the deaths. Murcia straddles a fault line, and in my youth I played in a lake which I only recently realised was in fact the flooded caldera of a dormant volcano.

 

Interesting factoid: the spain earthquake happened on the day Raffaele Bendandi, an italian geologist who died in 1979, predicted a quake would destroy Rome. The prediction is said to be apocryphical, however, and treated as an urban myth.