Experts from the Greek Earthquake Planning and Protection Organization have been dispatched to the southern Peloponnesian region of Messinia to monitor a four-month spike in seismic activity, it was reported on Tuesday by daily Kathimerini.
Scientists from the organization will be working with engineers from the regional authority to assess whether a spate of small quakes in the area are cause for concern, as the mayors of one village rang the alarm bells after a number of stone residences were deemed unfit for habitation.
In the village of Katsaros in the municipality of Oichalia, the mayor said, 20 stone houses have shown signs of dilapidation and have been vacated, while there has also been some minor damage to other homes and the village’s main church.
Speaking on Skai TV on Tuesday, Oichalia Mayor Filippos Babis stressed that the families evacuated from the 20 stone residences have nowhere to stay, and said that he would be assigning them to steel container houses supplied to the municipality after the deadly forest fires of 2007.
The last major earthquake in Greece, and the deadliest in decades, hit Athens in 1999, when a number of buildings collapsed and 143 people were killed. The quake registered 5.9 on the Richter scale.
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