Palermo – An earthquake off the coast of Sicily on Friday, October 23, caused schools and public buildings to be temporarily evacuated. The strongest quake in the series reached a moment magnitude of 5.5 at 12:19 p.m. local time. The tsunami warning issued at noon was lifted later that same day at 1:22 p.m. As of Friday evening, no damage had been reported.
The Italian Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology pinpointed the epicenter of the main quake in the southern Tyrrhenian Sea, north of Sicily. According to the official assessment, the earthquake’s hypocenter was nine kilometers deep. The tremors were felt on the Aeolian Islands as well as along the northern coast, extending as far as the areas around Palermo, Messina, and Trapani.
In Palermo, people left their homes and workplaces. About 300 students and teachers from the Giusino campus of the Liceo Margherita gathered in the square near the cathedral. Other schools and the former provincial government building were also evacuated. The University of Palermo suspended its afternoon classes. The evacuations were precautionary measures and did not indicate any damage to the buildings.
Earthquake off the coast of Sicily: Measurements Allow All-Clear to Be Given
Four minutes after the main quake, the CAT-INGV Tsunami Warning Center initially sent a notification to the national civil defense agency. At 12:29 p.m., it raised the alert level to „Advisory“ (orange). The calculations indicated the possibility of a small tsunami; they did not detect any tsunami waves that had already been measured.
Subsequent monitoring of water levels at Strombolicchio and Ginostra ruled out an active tsunami in the southern Tyrrhenian Sea. The all-clear was then issued. This marked the first time since the introduction of a new probabilistic calculation method that the warning service had to respond to an event in the Mediterranean Sea. The method takes into account uncertainties regarding the formation and propagation of potential waves.
The series of earthquakes continued on Friday. Experts described the area north of Sicily as seismically active. However, based on the cluster of quakes, it is not possible to reliably predict either the timing or the magnitude of another earthquake. Authorities ordered precautionary inspections of particularly vulnerable buildings and checked the designated evacuation areas for the public.
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