Seismologist Susana Custódio said today that the 5,3 earthquake felt this morning is not of an unusual magnitude and considered that the shock is an opportunity for citizens to remember protective measures.
“It is not an unusual magnitude (…). Throughout the history of our country, from time to time, we have earthquakes of quite high magnitude, with a regularity that, fortunately, does not happen every day. These are more infrequent events”, stated Susana Custódio.
An earthquake measuring 5,3 on the Richter scale was recorded at 05:11 and had its epicenter 58 kilometers west of Sines, in the district of Setúbal. The shock did not cause personal or material damage, according to the National Emergency and Civil Protection Authority (ANEPC).
The professor at the Faculty of Sciences of the University of Lisbon, who lives in Setúbal and woke up to the “house shaking a lot”, said that the country, “very often”, has “very low magnitude earthquakes” and “then, with a “intermediate regularity, from time to time” “these earthquakes of moderate magnitude” occur.
“We have several earthquakes in our territory of varying magnitudes, both recorded instrumentally by our network of seismometers, and also in the historical period”, he said.
For the researcher at Instituto D. Luiz, earthquakes like the one recorded today are, “from a cultural point of view”, important for people to remember that they live in a country where there are earthquakes, which has active faults and is close to a plate boundary .
“There are people who live their entire lives in Portugal without feeling an earthquake. And so we tend to think that earthquakes happen in other places, to other people, and that's not true, we live in earthquake territory. Fortunately, they are not as frequent as in Japan or California [United States of America] or Turkey, so frequent and destructive in nature, but we live in a land of earthquakes and we have to be aware of that”, he highlighted.
Noting that whenever there is an earthquake it can be a period of greater seismic activity, Susana Custódio explained that “the fact that there has been an earthquake slightly changes the tensions on planet Earth and, sometimes, this causes readjustments”.
“Therefore, there are the known aftershocks and, sometimes, there may even be earthquakes of greater magnitude”, he declared, noting that “this is nothing alarmist, therefore it is nothing that does not happen regularly”.
For the seismology specialist, replicas are expected to occur.
“The aftershocks are generally of lower magnitude and it is also possible in these cases that there is (…) a subsequent earthquake of an equivalent or even greater magnitude, although this is more infrequent”, he pointed out.
Susana Custódio highlighted that this is a period for the population to be especially attentive.
“In our territory, we must always be prepared for a major earthquake to happen. Without being alarmist, [this] is a good opportunity to remind ourselves that we have to be prepared for these types of events,” she highlighted.
The seismologist also recommended that citizens take advantage of “this experience, this moment and this window of opportunity in which they are alert to earthquakes, to go to Civil Protection page and remember exactly the prevention and self-protection measures in the event of an earthquake".
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