Earthquake swarm continues on the Canary Islands

July 26, 2011 – CANARY ISLANDS – The Canary Islands Government has said it is monitoring an earthquake swarm on the small island of El Hierro where in excess of 620 tremors of low magnitude have been recorded in the past week. Earthquakes, measuring between 1 and 3 on the Richter Scale, continued on Monday and more have been registered again on Tuesday. The majority of earthquakes are being recorded at a depth of between 5km and 15 km. The Ministry of Economy, Finance and Government Security Canary has convened the first ever meeting of the Steering Committee and Volcanic Monitoring, reflected in the Specific Plan Protection Civil and Emergency for Volcanic Risk, given what it described “the significant increase in seismic activity.” A statement (translated from Spanish) issued following the meeting outlined: “This committee met (Friday) at the headquarters of the Directorate General Security and Emergency Tenerife, established after the assessment of information gathered from seismic and volcanological last July 17 by the National Geographic Institute (IGN) and Volcanological Institute of the Canary Islands, the situation is total normal for the green light for the information population, activating mechanisms for monitoring and oversight needed to coordinate the actions of self civil population and information contained in the Plan. According to data provided by the seismic monitoring station IGN’s located in Valverde, one can conclude that from the noon on July 17 there has been a significant increase of low magnitude seismic activity in the municipality of Border of the island of El Hierro. To improve the location of this activity, has deployed a seismic network densification operational since July 21 has helped increase the number of earthquakes located, and can be viewed at Web http://www.ign.es/ign/main/index.do”, the statement added. –Irish Weather On-line