Series of tremors around Paphos

SIX small earthquakes were recorded off the coast of Paphos in a seven-hour period from Thursday night going into Friday morning.

Kyriacos Solomi, head of the Cyprus Seismology Department, yesterday told the Mail that the tremors were small and apart from one, were not felt by people.
The first and strongest of the tremors occurred at 9.48pm and measured 4.7 on the Richter scale. Its epicentre was 114 kilometres north of Paphos, 40km below sea level.

The final tremor was recorded by Solomi’s instruments at 4.58am yesterday morning and measured 3.4 on the Richter scale.

Solomi said the quakes were caused by, “activity in the Cyprian arc, on the boundary of the African and Eurasian plates. Polis Chrysochous was the closest place to the epicentre of the swarm of quakes which were all located between 114 and 124 km north-west of the town.”

Solomi explained that no further tremors were expected.
The strongest earthquake in the island’s recent history occurred on October 9, 1996, when a quake measuring 6.5 on the Richter scale was felt on the island. The most destructive quake last century happened in September 1953 and claimed the lives of 63 people. One-hundred-and-fifty-eight villages in the Paphos district were affected.

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