The earthquake of magnitude 5.1 struck Wednesday southeast of Spain, causing panic in the town of Lorca. Residents line up Düring food distribution in open area in Lorca year, after a rare earthquake rocked the Town in Southeastern Spain Causing houses to collapse, Damaging historic churches and public buildings and killing at least six people, early May 12, 2011. Some reports 5.3 magnitude earthquake Said The tremors felt Through the region of Murcia and has HAD Affected nursing home & the tower of a church.
At least ten people were killed in an earthquake of magnitude 5.1 that struck on Wednesday south-eastern Spain, causing panic in the town of Lorca, a town of 92,700 inhabitants located 70 kilometers south- west of Murcia.
In the streets of the city, invaded by the rubble, television images showed the destroyed facades, stone walls still falling, cars crushed under tons of debris, a huge bell tower of a fallen, crushed to the ground.
The magnitude 5.1 earthquake that was felt to Madrid, about 350 kilometers north-west, was recorded at 6:47 p.m. (4:47 p.m. GMT) with its epicenter in the region of Lorca. It was preceded by an initial shock to 5:05 p.m. (3:05 p.m. GMT) with magnitude 4.4.
A little later, a bell tower collapsed live before the television cameras, raising a cloud of dust, adding to the panic.
This is the first deadly earthquake in Spain for 42 years, and the deadliest since 1956.
The Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, ordered the dispatch of a military unit to participate in emergency relief.
The Interior Ministry has reported heavy damage. "There's damage throughout the city," he said on television Mayor Lorca, Francisco Jodar.
Virtudes, a resident of Lorca, doctor, confided on the website of El Pais be "scared to death". "It's like a movie", "We are waiting for aftershocks," she added.
"We were very scared. I'll spend the night there, I do not know where," told in the streets of Lorca's an old man, haggard, clutching a blanket against him, in the incessant ringing of sirens of ambulances.
On the website of El Pais, Emilio, a resident of Murcia, recounted: "Suddenly the ground began to tremble, my mother came in crying and told us to put ourselves under the frame of the doors" .
"I was at home, I live on the fifth floor and the building was moved a few inches at least. It was very scary, it was very hard, and after all that happened in Japan Esmeralda …", reflected on the website of El Pais.
The director of the seismic Spanish Emilio Carreno, explained that the Murcia region, bordering the Mediterranean, was "one of the regions of the peninsula where the earthquake risk is highest.
"It is normal to reach such magnitude, but we did not used to very high magnitude in this region," said Carreno.
Soon, people would gather in the streets without knowing where they would spend the night, while debris continued to fall facades. Patients from a hospital in the city, the hospital Virgen del Alcazar, were evacuated by television.
The quake was also felt to Almeria, Granada, Jaen, Malaga and Sevilla in Andalusia, in southern Iraq.