The 1932 Ierissos earthquake occurred at 19:20 on 26 September. It caused severe damage in

Ierissos Ierissos () is a small town on the east coast of the Akti peninsula in Chalkidiki, Greece. It is located 115 km from Thessaloniki, and 10 km from the border of the Autonomous Monastic State of the Holy Mountain, or Mount Athos. It is th ...

, Greece and the surrounding part of the

Chalkidiki Chalkidiki (; , alternatively Halkidiki), also known as Chalcidice, is a peninsula and regional unit of Greece, part of the region of Central Macedonia, in the geographic region of Macedonia in Northern Greece. The autonomous Mount Athos reg ...

peninsula, with 161–491 casualties reported.

Tectonic setting

The

Aegean Sea The Aegean Sea is an elongated embayment of the Mediterranean Sea between Europe and Asia. It is located between the Balkans and Anatolia, and covers an area of some . In the north, the Aegean is connected to the Marmara Sea, which in turn con ...

is an area of mainly

extensional tectonics Extensional tectonics is concerned with the structures formed by, and the Tectonics, tectonic processes associated with, the stretching of a planetary body's Crust (geology), crust or lithosphere. Deformation styles The types of structure and the ...

caused by the

subduction Subduction is a geological process in which the oceanic lithosphere and some continental lithosphere is recycled into the Earth's mantle at the convergent boundaries between tectonic plates. Where one tectonic plate converges with a second p ...

of the African plate beneath Aegean Sea plate. In the northwest Aegean, extension on approximately W-E trending extensional faults is accompanied by dextral (right lateral)

strike-slip In geology, a fault is a planar fracture or discontinuity in a volume of rock across which there has been significant displacement as a result of rock-mass movements. Large faults within Earth's crust result from the action of plate tectonic ...

on SW-NE trending faults, and minor sinistral (left lateral) movement on NW-SE trending faults, accommodating the diffuse plate boundary zone between the Eurasian plate and the Aegean Sea plate. The earthquake has been attributed to movement on the Stratoni fault, one of the W-E trending faults that shows predominantly dip-slip extension.

Damage

The earthquake destroyed the town of Ierissos and several villages in the surrounding area. 10,000 people were left homeless. The cost of the damage was estimated as 5 million

drachma Drachma may refer to: * Ancient drachma, an ancient Greek currency * Modern drachma The drachma ( ) was the official currency of modern Greece from 1832 until the launch of the euro in 2001. First modern drachma The drachma was reintroduce ...

s. The minor

tsunami A tsunami ( ; from , ) is a series of waves in a water body caused by the displacement of a large volume of water, generally in an ocean or a large lake. Earthquakes, volcanic eruptions and underwater explosions (including detonations, ...

caused no damage.

Characteristics

The Stratoni fault was identified as the fault responsible for the 1932 event because of evidence of surface ruptures recorded soon after the earthquake and from the pattern of isoseismals, which were elongated in a W-E to NW-SE orientation and similarly orientated volume of recently observed seismicity. From the observation of

slickensides In geology, a slickenside is a smoothly polished surface caused by frictional movement between Rock (geology), rocks along a Fault (geology), fault. This surface is typically Striation (geology), striated with linear features, called slickenlines, ...

along exposed fault planes, the movement along the fault is dip-slip extensional with local areas of oblique slip with a component of sinistral (left-lateral) strike-slip. The extension direction is currently oriented north–south but, when the fault was formed, was oriented NNE-SSW, perpendicular to the fault trace, possibly due to subsequent clockwise rotation of the area. The earthquake was followed by three strong

aftershock In seismology, an aftershock is a smaller earthquake that follows a larger earthquake, in Epicenter, the same area of the Mainshock, main shock, caused as the displaced Crust (geology), crust adjusts to the effects of the main shock. Large earthq ...

s (M=6.0, 5.7 & 6.2) in the period 26–29 September, and the largest (M6.3) on 11 May of the following year. A minor tsunami was reported, which was recorded by a temporary

tide gauge A tide gauge is a device for measuring the change in sea level relative to a vertical datum. It is also known as a mareograph, marigraph, and sea-level recorder. When applied to freshwater continental water body, water bodies, the instrument may ...

, giving a maximum height of 1 m. The movement awoke the operator of a dredger, who saw a current spreading up the Strimonas River about an hour after the earthquake.

References

External links

* {{Earthquakes in Greece Earthquakes in Greece Ierissos Earthquake, 1932 History of Chalkidiki Ierissos Earthquake, 1932 1930s tsunamis 1932 disasters in Greece September 1932 in Europe

Tectonic setting

Damage

Characteristics

See also

References

External links