Friday, May 13, 2011

Lorca Earthquake


Around 17:00 on May 11th there was a small shallow earthquake at Lorca Murcia, 2 hours later a stronger one of 5.2 magnitude which has caused substantial damage to the town and latest reports of 9 fatalities and 327 injuries, 3 of them serious, 420 military personnel are helping the local emergency services with Search and Rescue and any other help needed, around 40% of the buildings have been damaged in the town,
A team of 150 technicians have performed inspection tasks in Lorca and have been responsible for cataloging the damaged properties 17% from those inspected received a red circle. A red circle means access is dangerous and refused. 44% had a green circle marking (safe to enter) and the remaining 39% received a yellow circle, allowing only access to collect furniture and other belonging.
3500 beds have been made available for victims of the earthquake.
Emma and family passed through Lorca at around 16:30 on a return trip from Cordoba, and nearly stopped for a meal but luckily decided against it.
We were in Blanca (around 100kms from Lorca) at the time and did not now anything about the event until around 22:00 as we did not have the radio or TV on. We felt no ground tremors at all.

1 comment:

Tumbit said...

I was in Lorca over the weekend to meet with relatives. The devastation was saddening and totally unexpected in a European country. My thoughts are with the people of Lorca.