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The thing is....this is not new. It always cycles, and the Med has often had bouts of quakes all along it.
Which, considering the tectonic cluster fruitcake there is going on there, is understandable.
I mean, the Horn of Africa and the entire Rift Valley has been feeling particularly frisky for the last 30 years, and that has direct knock-on effects up and down the linked faults.
edited 31st Oct '16 7:22:13 PM by Euodiachloris
It's the Apennine fault. In the Alps and in Sicily, Africa collides with Europe. Between these two collision zones, the Apennine fault is the offset.
The other problem is that unlike, say, California, Italy does not have much in terms of earthquake proofing, also because many buildings are too old.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard FeynmanReally? My impression is that the recentness of most buildings there is the reason, also because both the Kern County and San Francisco earthquakes only affected small parts of the state.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman![]()
An 1840ish build collapsing in 1922 isn't old, though. By Italian yardsticks, that's barely worn in.
Quite a lot of the older stuff is sufficiently engineered to survive (not unscathed, though: and, people have been stinting on the upkeep, which is the main issue)... And, has survived cycles of this before.
It's actually the newer stuff that's really worrying: it'll be the first time it's been put through its paces, and little of it has been designed to. :/
edited 5th Nov '16 6:57:20 AM by Euodiachloris

So 2016 has not been a good year for Italy in terms of earthquakes.
In addition to the massive quake that occurred yesterday, there were also two earthquakes last week, and yet another back in August. All of these quakes took place in central Italy. If my memory is correct, there has been a total of about 300 deaths caused by these quakes - no deaths from the one yesterday have been recorded, probably because the villages it affected have already been mostly abandoned. My boyfriend, who resides in the northern part of Italy, told me that he felt a brief spurt of seismic activity occur in his home; thankfully, he's fine and he lives in an area that is not affected by the quakes themselves.
With the frequency of these earthquakes in Italy in particular, it seems like their tectonic plates are a little... unstable. Will more of them occur this year? I hope not.