El Hierro rocks this Christmas: 59 earthquakes registered in one day
Friday, December 27, 2013 @ 7:42 PM
THE Canarian island of El Hierro has moved 1.5 centimetres as a result of a series of earthquakes over the Christmas period, says the National Geographic Institute (IGN). In just one day, 59 tremors were recorded of which four were felt by people living or staying on the island. Experts say the most intense of these reached 3.2 on the Richter Scale, which is sometimes enough to cause minor damage such as cracks in a window or items falling off shelves. Ever since an underwater volcano off the coast of La Restinga erupted continuously from October 2011 to March 2012, earth tremors have been a regular occurrence on the island with well over 10,000 registered in those six months. And in 2013, since the month of March, another series of earthquakes has been reported. The IGN says barely a week has passed since then without at least one tremor in El Hierro, although as yet none of them has reached as high as 4 on the Richter Scale. Most of them were under level 2, so residents would not have noticed them. They say the Christmas episode was the most active period of earthquakes since they started up again in March, a year after the underwater volcano stopped its eruptions.
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