Deadly earthquakes strike southern Spain

AP - Thousands of Spaniards stunned by the country’s deadliest earthquake in 55 years didn’t know Thursday whether they would be able to return to their homes following a pair of moderate quakes that killed nine people and caused extensive damage in this small agricultural city.

Thirty people were hospitalized, and tens of thousands of residents slept in cars, shelters fashioned from cardboard boxes and lawn chairs at makeshift camps in parks in southeastern Lorca, about 30 kilometers (19 miles) inland from Mediterranean Sea beach destinations where little to no damage was reported.

Only a few buildings were destroyed, but the quakes with magnitudes of 4.4 and 5.2 reported by Spain’s geological institute sent brick building facades and parts of terraces plunging into the streets and caused damage to hundreds of apartment buildings. While some people couldn’t stay home, many others didn’t want to stay inside for fear of aftershocks.

“The whole facade and the stairs of the apartment where I live are totally broken,” said resident Tomas Hinojo. “The hardest things happened right where I live. Three of the victims killed are my neighbors.”

Spanish experts said the second quake caused the most damage, and much more damage that would normally be expected by a quake of that magnitude because its epicenter was on the outskirts of Lorca and because it happened at the very shallow depth of about 1 kilometer (0.6 miles) below ground.

Those factors explained the quake’s destructive power, said Maria Jose Jurado Rodriguez, a geologist with the Spanish National Research Council, the government’s top scientific research group.

“That is very, very close to the surface,” she said. “That energy goes very directly to the inhabited area.”

Also, the soil in the Murcia region where Lorca lies is loose and sandy, meaning it can’t absorb earthquake energy as well as places that have more compact soil, said Ramon Aragon Rueda, head of the Murcia branch of the government’s Geological and Mining Institute.

The United States Geological Survey’s National Earthquake Information Center in Golden, Colorado reported slightly different magnitudes and a deeper quake depth.

The dead included one child. The regional government of Murcia - where Lorca is located - said no one had been reported missing as of Thursday.

Thirty people were hospitalized, three of them in serious condition, and an additional 260 were treated for light injuries and shock immediately after the quakes, the regional government’s health department said.

Officials estimated that about 30,000 people spent the night outdoors after the quakes, almost a third of the city’s 90,000 people.

Lorca itself looked like a war zone, with cars crushed by rubble and buildings scarred with cracks. The regional government said much of the damage was caused by parts of terraces in apartment buildings and masonry facade shook loose by the quakes.

As dawn broke, many people returned home to assess the damage but some said they had no idea when they would be able move back into their apartments and houses.

“You can’t imagine how it was,” said resident Antonio Galindo. “Everything was broken, you definitely cannot get in there. You can’t even open the door due to all the things that fell down there.”
In one of the most dramatic images, chunks of stones and brick fell from the bell tower of the San Diego church in the city center as a reporter for Spanish state TV was broadcasting live from the scene. The church’s bell also crashed down, just missing the reporter.

Lorca also suffered quakes of roughly the same magnitude in 1999, 2002 and 2005 that caused damage, but no injuries.

Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero halted campaigning for upcoming regional and municipal elections to oversee an emergency committee to coordinate rescue and aid operations, and made a special appearance in congress on Thursday to express condolences.

Eight hundred police and soldiers were deployed to the city to assist with the cleanup, but Zapatero warned that the process won’t be quick.

“We have a lot of work ahead of us,” he said. “The task is very, very intense.”

The quakes were the nation’s most deadly since 1956, when 12 people died and about 70 were injured in the southern Granada region, according to Spain’s National Geographic Institute.

The institute said Spain has about 2,500 quakes annually, but only a handful are felt. The south and southeast are the most prone regions.

Lorca has a mix of older buildings vulnerable to earthquakes and newer ones built after Spain put earthquake-resistance measures into its building code in the 1960s.

The law was last updated in 2002. The rules are stricter in earthquake-prone areas like Murcia, and inspectors will evaluate whether damaged buildings complied, said Javier Serra, high-ranking building safety official with the Infrastructure Ministry.

The quakes occurred in a seismically active area near a large fault beneath the Mediterranean Sea where the European and African continents brush past each other, USGS seismologist Julie Dutton said. The USGS said it has recorded hundreds of small quakes in the area since 1990.

John Bellini, a seismologist with the USGS center, said the larger earthquake had a preliminary 5.3 magnitude and struck 220 miles (350 kilometers) south-southeast of Madrid at 6:47 p.m. (1647 GMT, 12:47 p.m. EDT). It was about 6 miles (10 kilometers) deep, and was preceded by the smaller one with a 4.5 magnitude in the same spot, Bellini said.

Lorca has roots dating back to Roman times and is noted for its hilltop medieval fortress and other historic buildings. Its economy depends on agriculture, and thousands of immigrants from North Africa and Latin American nations work the fields.