Magnitude 5.9 Southern Italy

Thursday, October 31, 2002 at 10:32:58 (UTC)

	Magnitude 5.9 Time Thursday, October 31, 2002 at 10:32:58(UTC) Distance from 40 miles (60 km) WNW of Foggia, Italy Coordinates 41 deg. 43.7 min. N (41.728N) 14 deg. 53.6 min. E ( 14.893E) Depth 10.0 km (6.2 miles) Quality Error estimate: horizontal +/- 5 km; depth fixed by location program Comments Damage occurred in the Campobasso area and at least 22 children were killed in a collapsed school.
Tectonic Setting Preliminary moment-tensor solutions for this earthquake imply that the shock occurred as the result of movement on a strike-slip fault. The fault would be either a north-south, left-lateral fault or an east-west, right-lateral fault. Some geologists have hypothesized that a major component of the relative motion between the African plate and Eurasian plate is accommodated on a north-south, left-lateral, boundary that passes near the epicenter of the earthquake. The boundary is thought to accommodate slip of 5 - 10 mm/ year. The preliminary focal-mechanisms are consistent with this model. It is noteworthy, however, that many destructive earthquakes in Italy occur as the result of deformation of the earth's crust that is not related in a simple way to the present-day movements of the African and Eurasian plates. Until detailed studies of this earthquake are completed, hypotheses on the earthquake's relationship to large-scale plate-tectonic processes are speculative.

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U.S. Geological Survey, National Earthquake Information Center