A strong earth tremour was felt right across a good part of Tuscany and nearby Emilia Romagna this afternoon at 15.48 PM with the epicentre right here in this area in Garfagnana.
It lasted for 5 long seconds and registered 4.8 on the Richter scale.
The Protezione Civile are assessing data but so far no reports of any damage.
Here in Barga Vecchia many people left their houses and gathered in open spaces away from the danger of any possibility of falling masonry.
More news will be added once the situation becomes clearer but to repeat, for the moment, no reports of any damage .
The railway line which runs through the bottom of the valley from Lucca up to Aulla was closed soon after the tremour as engineers checked that there was no damage to the line . It was re-opened once again two later.
All local schools in Garfagnana and most of the schools in the Province of Lucca * will not be open to students in the morning (Saturday) as checks on any structural damage will be made before they can be re-opened.
* the exceptions are schools in Gallicano, Pietrasanta and Seravezza
STRANGE FACT – it would seem that this week in January is historically the time of year for earthquakes in Garfagnana
In 1985 there was a strong tremour in this area on the 23rd January.
Last year as we reported here in this article: Earth tremours felt right across the region which fell on the 24th January and this year another strong shake on the 25th.
The Richter magnitude scale (often shortened to Richter scale) is one of a number of ways that have been developed to assign a single number to quantify the energy contained in an earthquake.
The scale is a base-10 logarithmic scale. The magnitude is defined as the logarithm of the ratio of the amplitude of waves measured by a seismograph to an arbitrary small amplitude. An earthquake that measures 5.0 on the Richter scale has a shaking amplitude 10 times larger than one that measures 4.0, and corresponds to a 31.6 times larger release of energy
Since the mid 20th century, the use of the Richter magnitude scale has largely been supplanted by the moment magnitude scale in many countries.