Fifteen days after an earthquake of magnitude 5.8 that shook Crete and left one dead and ten injured in the village of Arkalohori, 23 kilometers from Herakleion, a powerful earthquake of magnitude 6.3 was recorded, off the coast of the island in southern Greece, the Athens National Observatory announced on Tuesday (October 12th).
The epicenter of the earthquake felt on the island was “Recorded at sea at 9:24 a.m. GMT [11 h 24 à Paris] 405 kilometers in the south-east of Athens and 24 kilometers from the town of Zakros », off the eastern coast of Crete, according to a statement from the Athens Observatory. According to local media, the earthquake was felt in Crete and on the islands of the Dodecannese archipelago in the Aegean Sea. “The epicenter of the earthquake is at sea, far from inhabited localities”, said the Greek seismologist Gerassimos Papadopoulos on Skaï radio. Several aftershocks followed the earthquake.
The September 27 earthquake that damaged a thousand buildings had a different epicenter than Tuesday, according to Papadopoulos. It was then recorded 346 kilometers south of the Greek capital and had a depth of 10 kilometers. After the main shock, the Athens Observatory had recorded more than thirty aftershocks in five hours.
Greece is crossed by important geological faults and earthquakes are frequent. On March 3, central Greece was shaken by an earthquake in Elassona, leaving one dead and ten injured as well as extensive damage. On October 30, 2020, a magnitude 7 earthquake rocked the Aegean Sea between the Greek island of Samos and the Turkish city of Izmir, killing 114 in Turkey and two in Samos.