Recent Italian earthquakes may be showing a ‘domino effect’, seismologist warns

The latest Italian earthquake fortunately seems to have killed no-one but at magnitude 6.6 was a strong one. In Rome ‘The metro was halted for hours and the Colosseum was being checked for damage.’

What next? The Daily Telegraph consults an expert.

The earthquakes that have buffeted central Italy over the last two months could continue in a devastating domino effect with one large quake leading to another along the central Apennine fault system, a leading seismologist has warned.

The latest earthquake on Sunday morning caused no known casualties but was the strongest to hit Italy, one of the world’s most seismically active countries, since 1980.

Gianluca Valensise, a seismologist at Italy’s National Institute for Geophysics and Vulcanology, said there was a “geodynamic link” between the deadly August earthquake and all those that have followed.

Italy’s Apennine mountains that run from the Liguria region in the northwest to the southern island of Sicily are dominated by a chain of faults in the earth’s crust, each one averaging about 10-20 kilometres in length.
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Looking ahead, he [Valensise] said it was certain there would be aftershocks from Sunday’s earthquake for “at least a few weeks,” but it was not possible to say whether there would be any more more big quakes.

The risk is that, with faults to the northwest and southeast of the central region most recently hit, “if the process of stress redistribution finds other faults close to rupture level they could go off in the next days or weeks”, he said.

Full report: Earthquakes could continue to batter central Italy in devastating ‘domino effect’, seismologist warns | The Daily Telegraph

H/T Michele Casati