114 earthquakes hit the island of El Hierro in under 30 hours

Update : Scientists from the Institute of Volcanology in the Canaries (Involcan) have detected deformations to the island of El Hierro related to the recent seismic activity that has been taking place since the 22nd December 2013 and that during the first 24 hours of this new ‘event’ starting there has been a shift in the vertical (elevation) of the island of 1.5cm. Between 1 January and 21 December 2013, the vertical displacement observed has been 6.5cm., an average of around about 0.02 centimeters per day.

Original article: The National Geographic Institute (IGN) is currently studying new seismic activity on the island of El Hierro where up to 114 earthquakes have been recorded in a period of just 30 hours. The biggest of these measured 3.2 on the Richter scale. Five of the quakes were felt by the islands population in areas of El Pinar and La Frontera.

Carmen López (from the IGN) explained that this new seismic activity is similar to that recorded in March this year, but is located in another area of ​​the island at a depth in around 15-20 km. She said that this would be the sixth series of events recorded on the island since 2011. She added that there has been little seismic activity in the months of November and December but this event is a little more intense and concentrated in some areas.

The IGN also declared that they had detected some tremors last night (23rd December 2013) on the islands of Gran Canaria and Tenerife, but Carmen Lopez said that “this seismicity is considered ‘normal’ as there are always a few earthquakes per month”.