At 08:12 Italian time today, an earthquake of magnitude Mw 5.8 was located by the Operations Room of the INGV in Rome off the Western Coast of the Peloponnese, Greece. The hypocentral depth was estimated at 33 kilometers. The National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology (Ingv) writes this on its website. The epicenter of the earthquake is about 40 kilometers from the Greek coast, among the closest cities is Pyrgos to the north-east, the island of Zakynthos to the north-west. The area in which today’s event occurred is close to the epicentral area of the strong earthquake (Mw 6.8) of 26 October 2018 which occurred 30 kilometers from Zakynthos. A tsunami warning was issued for that event which was then lifted a few hours later.
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This earthquake also activated the INGV Tsunami Warning Center (CAT), as the magnitude of the event was just above the minimum attention threshold of 5.5. In particular, for events with a magnitude of up to 6.0, the message that the CAT sends to the national Civil Protection Department and to the Mediterranean countries is an information message and not a true alert. For earthquakes of this magnitude, in fact, a tsunami is not expected, but the occurrence of the seismic event is still reported. The message was sent from the CAT to the DPC (and from this to all the components of the National Civil Protection Service) 5 minutes after the origin time of the earthquake. Despite the large distance from the Italian coast (over 300 kilometres), the earthquake was felt in some areas of southern Italy, especially in Puglia, Calabria and eastern Sicily. In fact, from the preliminary map of macroseismic impacts obtained with over 500 questionnaires sent to the “Did you feel the earthquake?” resentments up to the IV-V degree Mcs are noted.
