Quakes shake resort area
Two moderately strong earthquakes rattled the central Dodecanese yesterday morning in the wake of Tuesday’s seismic activity, but no damage or injuries were recorded. Experts played down the threat to the area, which includes major tourist destinations such as Rhodes and Kos. The first of yesterday’s two quakes, which registered 5.7 on the Richter scale, occurred within Turkish waters in the sea east of Kos, some 375 kilometers (233 miles) southeast of Athens, just after 6 a.m. A 5.5-Richter quake followed an hour and a half afterward. The quake was strongly felt in Turkey, where seven people were injured after panicking and jumping out of windows or off balconies, but no damage was recorded. In Athens, seismologists expressed optimism that the earthquake series would decline. «There will be dozens of smaller quakes… but I think that we are gradually returning to normal levels for the area,» Giorgos Stavrakakis, head of the Geodynamic Institute, told Kathimerini. On Monday, three tremors under 5.1 Richter struck the area.
