No 962 Monday 13th - Sunday 19th March 2023
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Now in our 20th year of keeping people safe and informed - The Costa Blanca’s oldest ‘FREE’ English language newspaper
he Ars Creatio Cultural Association, in collaboration with the town hall, are organising a series of events to mark the 1829 Torrevieja Earthquake, which occurred on 21 March 1829, with tours given by costumed actors and seismologist, Nahúm Méndez Chazarra, from the University of Granada, who will be giving a talk about the devastation and how it served to improve anti-seismic protocols.
COULD THE 1829 TORREVIEJA T E A RT H Q U A K E H A P P E N A G A I N ?
Whereas we can only imagine the devastation that the 1829 earthquake caused, we have seen the death and destruction that the 7.8 earthquake caused in Turkey last month, killing at least 53,000 people, and destroying more than 200,000 buildings. The Torrevieja earthquake of 1829 had an estimated magnitude of 6.6 and killed 386 people, with 2,965 houses totally destroyed. Although commonly referred to as the Torrevieja earthquake, the devastation affected the entire Vega Baja, but it wasn’t the first earthquake in the area. In fact, since the National Geographic Institute (IGN) started collecting records, three of the 27 major earthquakes that have occurred in Spain have occurred in the province of Alicante. Prior to the 1829 disaster, we need to go back to 1048, when the Orihuela mosque was destroyed. The second was on 19 June 1644 with its epicentre in Muro de Alcoy, where several houses were destroyed. Both are listed as "intensity VIII", which was the old measure (before the 20th century) to assess the importance of earthquakes, although what it really reflected was the amount of destruction caused.
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