A strong earthquake hit Croatia on Tuesday, with some injuries reported as well as considerable damages to roofs and buildings southeast of the capital.
The European Mediterranean Seismological Center said
an earthquake of 6.3 magnitude hit 46 kilometers (30 miles) southeast of Zagreb. Initial reports said the earthquake caused wide damage, collapsing roofs, building facades and even some entire buildings.
The regional N1 television reported live Tuesday from the town of Petrinja, which was hard-hit in the Monday quake, that a collapsed building had fallen on a car. The footage showed firefighters trying to remove the debris from the car, which was buried underneath. The report said a man apparently was in the car when the quake hit.
The earthquake was felt throughout the country and in neighboring Serbia and Bosnia.
The same area was struck with a 5.2 quake on Monday.
Comment: Here's a
report on yesterday's smaller quake in Croatia.
Earlier this year, within a few days of the West going into collective lockdown, a
5.3M quake hit Zagreb. And that was the capital's strongest tremor in 140 years...
Update: On 30.12.20
The Independent reports:
A major earthquake of magnitude 6.3 hit Croatia, killing at least seven people - including a 12-year-old girl - and causing widespread damage in a town near the capital, Zagreb.
Firefighters rescued a man and a boy trapped in a car buried in rubble in Petrinja after buildings collapsed, leaving the streets littered with fallen bricks and covered in dust.
Officials said a 12-year-old girl died in Petrinja, a town of some 25,000 people. Another six people were killed in nearly destroyed villages close to the town, according to HRT state television. At least 26 people were hospitalised, six with serious injuries, officials said, adding that many more people remained unaccounted for.
"My town has been completely destroyed. We have dead children," the town's mayor, Darinko Dumbovic, said in a statement to HRT.
"This is like Hiroshima - half of the city no longer exists. The city has been demolished, the city is no longer liveable. We need help."
The Croatian military was deployed in Petrinja to help with the rescue operation and the Croatian Red Cross described the situation as "very serious" as it dispatched crisis teams to the area.
Croatia's prime minister, Andrej Plenkovic, travelled to the town to oversee the efforts to accommodate homeless residents in local hotels and army barracks after what he described as a "devastating earthquake which was felt in many parts of Croatia".
He tweeted: "We mobilised all available services to help people and clear the destroyed parts. The most important thing now is to save human lives."
Rest of article here.
The seismic activity continues. According to
Croatia Week:
Two more strong earthquakes struck Croatia on Wednesday morning, the first measuring 4.7 and the second 4.8 on the Richter scale, with the epicentre in the Petrinja area.
The first hit at 6.15 a.m. and the second a little later, the head of the Seismological Survey, Ines Ivancic, told Croatian Radio.
She said the ground "will rock for a long time. Tuesday's earthquake was devastating and will certainly be followed by a long series of earthquakes, including, quite certainly, stronger ones."
Ivancic said weaker tremors like those today would certainly affect the buildings in Petrinja and Sisak which were damaged in Tuesday's 6.2 quake, which has claimed seven lives and caused enormous damage.
Ivancic said Petrinja was struck by "an enormous quantity" of smaller earthquakes since Monday. The ground is shaking almost every minute, she said, including at least 25 to 30 tremors measuring above 3 on the Richter scale.
Comment: Just under 3 hours earlier a magnitude 6.1 earthquake struck Argentina. The Vanuatu quake is additionally the second magnitude 6 to hit off the island in 2 days.