A man walks outside a damaged building after an earthquake stroked the area in Floq, Albania, June 1, 2019. REUTERS/Florion Goga

FLOQ, Albania (Reuters) - Six earthquakes in the space of two hours, the first with a magnitude of 5.3, shook south-eastern Albania on Saturday, injuring four people and causing damage to 100 houses, authorities and eyewitnesses said.

Four people were hurt from the collapse of the walls, roofs and plaster of their houses, and were taken to hospital in the region’s main town of Korce in eastern Albania, the Defence Ministry said.

“It was 06:30 when I went out to milk the cows when the earthquake struck. I woke up the children and the adults and we ran outside, all of us,” Petrit, 60, told Reuters in the village of Floq, the epicenter of the earthquakes.

The roof of Petrit’s house had collapsed over two rooms. Some 70 houses were damaged in Floq and the nearby village of Dvoran, the Defence Ministry said.

Half of the 100 damaged house were abandoned old structures, the Defence Ministry said. Soldiers were pitching military tents in Floq and firefighters were also there.

Fifty families in the mostly-damaged neighborhood of Floq had abandoned their houses for fear of other quakes, finding shelter either in the military tents or with relatives, the villagers said.

The first earthquake had its epicenter 15 km southeast of the town of Korce at a depth of 14 km and was followed by another seven minutes later at a depth of 18 km in an area bordering Greece and North Macedonia.

Lower intensity tremors continued in Korce and the southern area of Gjirokaster, on the border with northern Greece. </s> TIRANA, Albania (AP) — An earthquake with a preliminary magnitude of 5.3 struck rural areas in Albania early Saturday southeast of Tirana, the capital, injuring four people and damaging about 100 houses, authorities said.

The Defense Ministry reported that four people were injured from falling walls at their homes and about 100 houses, many uninhabited, were damaged. The injured were sent to a local hospital.

Albania’s Institute of GeoSciences, Energy, Water and Environment says the quake occurred at 6:26 a.m. Saturday and affected the Korca district, 180 kilometers (110 miles) southeast of Tirana.

Emergency authorities have set up tents for residents whose homes have been damaged and have sent food and drinking water.

Located mostly along the Adriatic Sea, Albania is part of an earthquake-prone area, registering quakes every few days, though most are not felt. </s> TIRANA, Albania - An earthquake with a preliminary magnitude of 5.3 struck rural areas in Albania southeast of the capital, injuring four people and damaging about 100 houses, authorities said Saturday.

The Defence Ministry reported preliminary evidence of four people injured from falling walls at their houses. It added that about 100 houses, more than half of them long uninhabited, were damaged.

A statement said those hurt were sent to the local hospital to be treated for slight injuries.

The Institute of GeoSciences, Energy, Water and Environment says the quake occurred at 4:26 GMT (0626 local time) Saturday and affected the Korca district, 180 kilometres (110 miles) southeast of Tirana.

Emergency authorities have set up tents for locals and have send food and drinking water. </s> TIRANA (REUTERS) - Six earthquakes in the space of two hours, the first with a magnitude of 5.3, shook south-eastern Albania on Saturday (June 1), injuring five people and causing damage to five houses, the Defence Ministry and local media reported.

Five people were hurt when a house collapsed, one local media outlet reported, while Albanian authorities said they were monitoring the situation after the quake and aftershocks.

"No extraordinary situation has been reported in any district of the country," Albania's Defence Ministry said.

The first earthquake had its epicentre 15km south-east of the town of Korce at a depth of 14km and was followed by another seven minutes later at a depth of 18km in an area bordering Greece and North Macedonia.

Lower intensity tremors continued in Korce and the southern area of Gjirokaster, on the border with northern Greece. </s> At least four people were killed and 33 were missing after a powerful earthquake paralyzed Hokkaido on Thursday, but the death toll was likely to rise as rescuers searched houses buried by landslides.

The quake, the latest episode in a miserable summer of natural disasters in Japan, knocked out power to all of Hokkaido's 5.3 million residents.

Public broadcaster NHK said the death toll had doubled to four and that six people were found in cardiopulmonary arrest, a term commonly used in Japan before death is formally confirmed. Another 120 were injured after the 6.7-magnitude quake struck before dawn.

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said 25,000 Self-Defense Force troops would be deployed for rescue operations.

Aerial footage showed dozens of landslides exposing barren hillsides near the town of Atsuma in southern Hokkaido, with mounds of reddish earth and toppled trees piled up at the edge of green fields. The collapsed remains of what appeared to be houses or barns were scattered about.

"It came in four big jerks - bang! bang! bang! bang!" one unidentified woman told NHK. "Before we knew it our house was bent and we couldn't open the door."

The entire island lost power for the first time since Hokkaido Electric Power Co was created in 1951 when the utility conducted an emergency shutdown of all its fossil fuel-fired power plants after the quake. It said almost 12 hours later power was restored to parts of Sapporo, Hokkaido's capital, and Asahikawa, its second-most populated city.

Hokkaido Electric restarted four hydropower units with a total capacity of 300 megawatts (MW) and will restart the 250-MW Sunagawa coal-fired plant later Thursday, Industry Minister Hiroshige Seko said.

The company will also restart its 350-MW coal-fired Naie plant, oil-fired 700-MW Date plant and 700-MW oil-fired Shiriuchi plant from as early as Friday, Seko said.

The restoration of 2.9 gigwatts (GW) of power is expected to be possible by the end of Friday, including 600-MW of power coming across from the mainland, he said.

Peak power demand in Hokkaido, however, reaches 3.8 GW, so the restoration of all power across the island should take at least another week, Seko said.

All trains across the island, which is about the size of Austria, were also halted.

The government said there was damage to Hokkaido Electric's Tomato-Atsuma plant, which supplies half the electricity to the island's 2.95 million households. It could take a week to restore power fully to all residents, Seko said.

Television footage from the southeastern part of Sapporo showed crumbled roads and mud flowing onto a main street. Police directed traffic because signal lights were out while drink-vending machines, ubiquitous in Japan, and most ATMs were not working.

"Without electricity, there's nothing I can do except to write prescriptions," a doctor in Abira, the town next to Atsuma, told NHK.

The quake hit at 3:08 a.m. at a depth of 40 km, with its epicenter about 65 km southeast of Sapporo, according to the Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA). It registered a strong 6 on Japan's 7-point quake scale.

It struck near Hokkaido's main airport, New Chitose Airport, which will remain closed for at least Thursday. Roof tiles and water could be seen on the terminal floors.

Chitose airport is a major gateway to the island, known for its mountains, lakes and abundant farmland and seafood. More than 200 flights and 40,000 passengers would be affected, Kyodo News agency said.

The closure comes just days after Kansai Airport, another major regional hub, in western Japan, was shut by Typhoon Jebi. The airport's operator said it would resume some domestic flights on Friday.

The Tomari nuclear power plantn, which has been shut since a 2011 earthquake and tsunami, suffered a power outage but officials said it was cooling its spent nuclear fuel safely.

Farming, tourism and other services are big economic drivers on Hokkaido, which accounts for just 3.6 percent of Japan's GDP, but there is some industry. Kirin Brewery and Sapporo Breweries both said factories were shut by the power outage.

A fire that broke out at a Mitsubishi Steel Mfg Co plant in the city of Muroran after the quake was extinguished with no injuries.

A series of smaller shocks, including one with a magnitude of 5.4, followed the initial quake, the JMA said. Residents were warned to take precautions for potential major aftershocks in coming days. </s> TIRANA, Albania — Albanian authorities say an earthquake with a preliminary magnitude of 5.3 has struck rural areas southeast of the capital, damaging some houses.

Local media reported that two people were injured. The Defence Ministry reported preliminary evidence of at least five damaged houses but did not confirm the injuries.

The Institute of GeoSciences, Energy, Water and Environment says the quake occurred at 4:26 GMT (0626 local time) Saturday and affected the Korca district, 180 kilometres (110 miles) southeast of Tirana.

Albania is part of an earthquake-prone area, registering quakes every few days, though most are not felt. </s> A 5.7-magnitude earthquake near Iran's border with Turkmenistan has killed two people, injured hundreds, and caused widespread damage.

The quake struck at 1800 GMT/UTC on May 13 in and around the city of Bojnurd, in North Khorasan Province, killing a 54-year-old woman and a teenage girl, ISNA news agency reported.

More than 370 people were injured and as many as 40 percent of houses in the area were left damaged, ISNA reported.

The epicenter was just 50 kilometers from the border with Turkmenistan.

Earthquakes are frequent in Iran, which is located on seismic faults.

In 2003, a magnitude-6.6 earthquake killed about 26,000 people and flattened the historic southeastern city of Bam.

Based on reporting by AP and AFP </s> A 5.7 magnitude earthquake near Iran’s border with Turkmenistan killed two people, injured hundreds and caused widespread damage, state media reported today, citing the country’s seismological centre. The quake, which struck at 1800 GMT Saturday in and around the city of Bojnurd, North Khorasan province, killed a 54-year-old woman and a teenage girl, ISNA news agency reported.

It left more than 370 people injured and damaged as many as 40 per cent of houses in the area, it said.

The US Geological Survey put the strength of the quake at 5.8 magnitude, and said it occurred at a depth of 12.5 kilometres. The epicentre of the earthquake was just 50 kilometres from the border with Turkmenistan.

On April 5, a 6.1 magnitude quake killed at least two people near Iran’s second city Mashhad, which is located southeast of Bojnurd.

The region is on an active fault line stretching from Turkmenistan’s capital Ashgabat into Iran’s three provinces of north, central (Razavi) and south Khorasan, according to state news agency IRNA.

The last major earthquake to strike Iran was in 2003 at Bam, in the southeastern province of Kerman, which killed at least 31,000 people and flattened the city.

For all the latest World News, download Indian Express App now </s> Separate studies offer evidence of geothermal plant causing Pohang earthquake

April 27, 2018

by Bob Yirka , Phys.org

Pohang, South Korea, Geothermal Power Plant with surface deformation and seismogram recorded after the November 2017 Mw 5.5 earthquake. Credit: Rob Westaway

Two teams working independently have found evidence implicating a geothermal plant in South Korea as a cause of a major earthquake in the city of Pohang last year. One of the teams, made up of researchers from several universities in Korea, used data from onsite seismic monitors to reach their conclusions. The other team was made up of researchers from across Europe and used satellite data to make their assessments. Both teams have published their findings in the journal Science.

Last year, on November 15, a 5.5-magnitude earthquake struck the South Korean city of Pohang, causing structural damage and numerous injurious to citizens. The quake was a surprise to much of the world because the area was not sitting on a known fault line and no earthquake had ever been recorded there. It was not a surprise to the Korean team of researchers, however, who had already observed numerous smaller earthquakes in the area that they suspected were caused by a geothermal plant—the size of the quake, on the other hand, was a major surprise. Because of the smaller quakes, the researchers had installed an array of seismic monitors around the plant. Just five days later, the big quake came. Data from the sensors indicated the earthquake was centered directly below the geothermal plant, strongly suggesting its activities were involved.

Geothermal plants such as the one proposed in Pohang (it has since been shut down) involve drilling two holes into the ground and then forcing water down them, causing the ground between them to crack. Once it does, water can be pumped down one hole and extracted from the other hole. The water is heated as it passes through the cracks underground. In most cases, such plants work without problem, but in this case, it appears the water served as a lubricant for an unknown fault.

Yangsan fault and location of the geothermal project near Pohang, South Korea. Credit: ETH Zurich

The second team used data from regional seismic monitors and also from satellites to study ground movement. They noted the earlier, smaller earthquakes and the larger one were all centered around the geothermal plant—they also noted that all of the quakes were unusually shallow. Taken together, the evidence suggests that the geothermal plant activities were the cause of the earthquakes.

More information: 1. F. Grigoli et al. The November 2017Mw5.5 Pohang earthquake: A possible case of induced seismicity in South Korea, Science (2018). DOI: 10.1126/science.aat2010

Abstract

The Mw 5.5 earthquake that struck South Korea in November 2017 was one of the largest and most damaging events in this country over the last century. Its proximity to an Enhanced Geothermal Systems site, where high pressure hydraulic injection had been performed during the previous two years, raises the possibility that this earthquake was anthropogenic. We have combined seismological and geodetic analyses to characterize the mainshock and its largest aftershocks, constrain the geometry of this seismic sequence and shed light on its casual factors. According to our analysis it seems plausible that the occurrence of this earthquake was influenced by these industrial activities. Finally we found that the earthquake transferred static stress to larger nearby faults, potentially increasing the seismic hazard in the area.

2. Kwang-Hee Kim et al. Assessing whether the 2017Mw5.4 Pohang earthquake in South Korea was an induced event, Science (2018). DOI: 10.1126/science.aat6081

Abstract

The Mw 5.4 Pohang earthquake, the most damaging event in South Korea since instrumental seismic observation began in 1905, occurred beneath the Pohang geothermal power plant in 2017. Geological and geophysical data suggest that the Pohang earthquake was induced by fluid from an enhanced geothermal system (EGS) site, which was injected directly into a near-critically-stressed subsurface fault zone. The magnitude of the mainshock makes it the largest known induced earthquake at an EGS site.

Press release

Journal information: Science

© 2018 Phys.org
Six earthquakes, the first 5.3 Mw, in a two-hour period near Korçë in southeastern Albania injure four people and damage around 100 houses.