Alex Trelinski
LORCA will commemorate the tenth anniversary this Tuesday(May 11) of an earthquake that took nine lives.
The Murcia region town will hold a memorial event at 7.00 pm in the Plaza de España.
The 5.2 magnitude tremor toppled several buildings and came at 4.47 pm, some 90 minutes after a 4.4 magnitude quake.
It was the worst earthquake to hit Spain since one struck in the Granada area in 1956.
With Lorca having so many older buildings, they were susceptible to damage from a big tremor.
Newer apartment blocks were also not strong enough to resist the historically-high tremor.
One of the most striking images of the aftermath of the 2011 devastation was that of a church bell crashing to the ground right in front of a TV cameraman.
Tuesday night’s memorial event will consist of speeches and music performances.
It will be attended by politicians and emergency service workers as well as the relatives of the people who died.
The previous day, a monument will be officially unveiled at La Viña’s Parque 11 de Mayo with nine trees to be planted in memory of the victims.
Scientists studying the fault line below Lorca suggested that groundwater removal may have caused the tragedy.
Detailed surface maps from satellite studies allowed them to infer which parts of the ground moved where.
They concluded in 2012 that those shifts correlate with locations where water has been drained for years.
There their study highlighted how human activity such as drainage or borehole drilling can have far-reaching seismic effects.
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