As part of an effort to improve services to Crete residents and accurate information about earthquakes, the Seismology lab of Crete Polytechnic has developed an on-line questionnaire to register the public’s response to earthquakes. The questionnaire will be activated after every quake of M4 or more in the Richter scale in the south east Mediterranean region. (http://gaia.chania.teicrete.gr).
The information will be used to better calculate the intensity of the seismic activity in the area there the quake was felt
In the last 48 hours western Crete has been experiencing more than its usual share of small earthquakes several of which were felt in Chania town and in western parts of the Chania prefecture.
Only one of these reached 4.7 R and no damage to buildings was reported.
The Mediterranean region is seismically active due to the northward convergence (4-10 mm/yr) of the African plate with respect to the Eurasian plate along a complex plate boundary, which started 50 mln years ago. The highest rates of seismicity in the Mediterranean region are found along the Hellenic subduction zone of southern Greece, that passes to the south of Crete along the North Anatolian Fault Zone of western Turkey and the Calabrian subduction zone of southern Italy.
In the Mediterranean region there is a written record, several centuries long, documenting pre-instrumental seismicity (pre-20th century). Earthquakes have in the past caused damage across central and southern Greece, Cyprus, Sicily, Crete, the Nile Delta, Northern Libya, the Atlas Mountains of North Africa and the Iberian Peninsula.
The 1903 M8.2 Kythera earthquake and the 1926 M7.8 Rhodes earthquakes are the largest recorded Mediterranean earthquakes, both of which are associated with the same subduction zone tectonics.
