ON Wednesday October 9, 1996 at 4.10pm, the strongest earthquake for over 100 years struck south east Cyprus. In all, 8,000 buildings were damaged, over 50 people were wounded and a couple of people died of heart attacks brought on by the shock of the quake.
Kyriacos Solomis, head of the Cyprus seismology department, remembers that day vividly. The seismology department had just moved offices, and now occupied the sixth floor of the Geological Surveys building in Nicosia. Because it was a Wednesday afternoon, the offices were empty, Solomis being the one staff member on duty monitoring the equipment. “It was a truly terrifying experience. The building was swaying violently, and I really thought that it could come down. How ironic would it have been if the building had collapsed, and the only person in there was the one seismologist in Cyprus?”
The department is not exactly bustling. The workforce consists of two people, Solomis and a technician, and there are seven monitoring stations dotted around the island. The whole operation cost the Ministry of Interior £200,000 to set up and about £20,000 a year to run. Twenty years ago Cyprus didn’t have a seismology office, and this is considering that the island sits in an area of relatively high seismic activity.
Cyprus can boast a long and illustrious history of earthquakes, accounts dating back thousands of years, with Paphos having been completely destroyed on a number of occasions. The earthquake of 1495 BC supposedly destroyed the temple of Aphrodite, and the quake of 367 AD severely damaged the temple of Apollo in Curium. In the past 100 years, 67 people have been killed in Cyprus as a result of earthquakes.
Despite these events, and despite the relatively high seismic activity, Cyprus is not in any particular danger of suffering a major earthquake in the near future. “Although we cannot predict earthquakes, we can come up with probabilities based on the monitoring of seismic activity, and analysing historical data.
“In the last decade we have had three strong earthquakes, which indicate higher than average seismic activity, so we estimate that the seismic energy has been released.
However, earthquakes don’t follow statistics, so we can’t exclude the possibility that a strong earthquake will occur,” explains Solomis.
Seismological probability calculations are complicated to say the least; however, to demonstrate the possibility, Solomis gives an example. “According to the statistics, an earthquake that measures above 6.6 on the Richter scale will hit Cyprus’ seismological area once every 166 years. However, this area measures 120,000 miles², and the island is only 9,251 miles².” This means that statistically, Cyprus will be hit by an earthquake of this magnitude less than once every 1,500 years, and this is not taking into account the probability that the epicenter would be near a built-up area.
So there is little need to panic. Solomis believes that the buildings in Cyprus are built to withstand most earthquakes “Due to the use of steel and cement structures, the vulnerability of buildings has been reduced.”
Because Cyprus has experienced strong earthquakes in the past decade with little damage done to the structures, Solomis thinks that the buildings are probably safe enough. “It is unlikely that we will have a stronger earthquake than we have experienced in the recent past.”
With the recent storms in Paphos causing havoc – roads swept away by mudslides, and houses dangerously close to going the same way – many are worried that a serious earthquake could cause a real disaster.
Solomis believes that these fears are to some extent justified, adding that the most dangerous time is in the winter, when the soil is wet and the potential for a landslides triggered by earthquakes is highest.
“All reinforced structures must comply with the Seismic Code, which is being improved all the time. Steps are being made in Cyprus towards being in accordance with the EU codes of practice, and we expect to have caught up by 2010,”concludes Solomis.
Over the past few years there seems to have been a spate of large scale natural disasters. The 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake, which caused the tsunami and killed 275,000 people, was the second largest on record, measuring a staggering 9.3 on the Richter scale. This was followed by the earthquake in Kashmir, which killed nearly 80,000 people.
However, Solomis does not believe that there is an upturn in the frequency of earthquakes worldwide. “Maybe in certain parts of the world there is higher than average seismic activity, but worldwide the situation remains the same.”
With this is mind, it should be possible to sleep easy with the knowledge that the chances of being caught in a major earthquake are incredibly slim.
