Yesterday at the hours 18:21 And 23:51 (local hours, respectively in Italy 00:21 And 05:31 today) two violent earthquakes of magnitude 6.3 they hit the Venezuela North-western with a large mene epicenter, 600 km from the capital Caracas. In both cases the hypocenter it was quite superficial and equal to about 10 km and were followed at 2:55 (in Italy 8:55) by a third weaker shock of magnitude 5.5 (5.8 second USGS). At the moment the authorities have not yet made official statements regarding the actual amount of damage or injuries but what is certain is that both SISMI were distinctly warned in many cities in the country – as in the capital Caracas – And in Colombia, as evidenced by numerous videos on social media. Being the epicenter relatively far from the coast, a tsunami alert has been reported in neither of the three cases.
From a geological point of view, that of Venezuela It is not a particularly seismic area – At least not in this area. For example, we consulted the following image provided by the USGS:
As we can see in the affected area of the SISMI (south of the Gulf of Venezuela) there are only a few dots, which correspond to historical seismes. Compared to other areas their concentration is clearly inferior And this means that intense and frequent seismic events usually do not occur here. Attention, this does not mean that the seismicity is nothing. In fact, at the macroscala we are in a context of collision and scrolling between plates and therefore, locally, they can be present systems of faults able to activate and give life to even rather intense earthquakes.
