El Hierro Registered More Than 4,000 Earth Tremors in 5 Weeks
August 29th, 2011
More than 4,000 very low-intensity earthquakes (many with negative values on the Richter scale) have occurred on the Canary island of El Hierro since 17th July, according to the National Geographic Institute records.
Speaking to Servimedia, researcher for the Higher Council for Scientific Research, Alicia Garcia, said that this does not signify “any risk to the population”, since ” they are very localised, very low magnitude and very deep” and the vast majority have occurred 10 kilometres beneath the earth’s crust.
The Canary Islands’ Steering and Volcanic Monitoring Committee has met twice and has insisted that “people have a green light”. However, Garcia continued, saying “we are working at another level” and “have implemented a very complex network (with up to six stages) to evaluate and “monitor the situation”.
“Indeed, El Hierro is experiencing seismic volcanic activity which is out of the ordinary,” which is being studied, but there is no danger to the population, the researcher said. According to Garcia, the population only felt one small earthquake (about 2 degrees on the Richter scale) since the others were not noticeable. The National Geographic Institute provides an update of these phenomena on their website every hour and, together with the Higher Council for Scientific Research, collects data on volcanic and seismic activity, ground deformation, gases, and water composition.
As reported in ABC News, Garcia, didn’t regard the earthquake which took place last week in the United States to have affected significantly the seismic activity of El Hierro. In her view, the earthquake in Virginia was “irregular, and out of the ordinary, as the East Coast of the United States had only one previous record of an earthquake.” However, she denied that unusual seismic activity is occurring “over the world in general”, adding that they are not dealing with “cases of strange earthquakes.”
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