4.8 magnitude earthquake registered east of Malta

An earthquake of magnitude 4.8 on the Richter Scale was registered 151km east of Malta earlier this morning. The light tremor was picked up at 9:27am by the University of Malta’s Seismic Monitoring and Research Group, shortly after a powerful earthquake hit central Italy.

No damages have been reported in Malta, but people have taken to social media to report that they had felt a tremor in Sliema, Valletta, San Gwann and Marsa.

In an interview with MaltaToday last year, the head of the university’s geosciences department Pauline Galea said that the seismic monitoring group registers an average of one tremor a month at a distance of between 50 to 100km from Malta’s shores, but that only one of these tremors would on average be perceptible to people in a year.

No people in Malta have ever died as a result of an earthquake, but a powerful one (7.4 on the Richter Scale) that had hit Sicily in 1693 had caused some damages to buildings on the island, including the Mdina Cathedral.