Tuesday’s latest moderate earthquake in Paphos highlights the fact that the Mediterranean island’s two main airports are built either on an active seismic fault or near one, Philenews reports.
An active fault is a fault that is likely to become the source of another earthquake sometime in the future, according to geologists.
They commonly consider faults to be active if there has been movement observed or evidence of seismic activity during the last 10,000 years.
The international airport in Larnaca is built on an active seismic fault and the smaller one, in Paphos, near one.
The epicenter of Tuesday’s 4.7-magnitude earthquake was 10 kilometres south-easterly of the coastal city, in the Paphos-Mandria airport’s wider region, according to deputy head of the Geological Department Christodoulos Hadjigeorgiou.
The latest earthquake is believed to be in the same seismogenic area that sparked the big one in 1953 and that of 1996.
On September 10, 1953, a catastrophic double earthquake occurred in the province of Paphos of magnitude 6 and 6.1 on the Richter scale.
It had killed 40 people while another 100 were injured and 4,000 left homeless.
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