1908 Italy: Messina, Sicily, Calabria Earthquake
Overview
Magnitude 7.0 struck the Strait of Messina before dawn in December 1908, destroying the Sicilian and Calabrian cities on either shore and killing an estimated 80,000 people. The shaking, rated Mercalli intensity XI, was compounded by a tsunami that swept the narrow strait, and property damage reached about 116 million dollars of the period. The earthquake broke faults along the Apennine and Calabrian arc of the central Mediterranean, a zone of active crustal extension. Messina's near-total ruin made the disaster one of the deadliest in European history and a landmark in the study of tsunami-generating earthquakes.
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Energy Released
31.8 atomic bombs
About This Earthquake
1908 Messina, Sicily, Calabria, Italy: M7.0 at depth unrecorded. Caused 78,000 deaths. Along the Apennine thrust belt of the Mediterranean.
Impact Details
| Damage | $116M |
Similar Historical Earthquakes
Frequently Asked Questions
The largest earthquake ever recorded was the 1960 Valdivia earthquake in Chile, at magnitude 9.5. It generated a tsunami that traveled across the Pacific Ocean and caused damage as far away as Hawaii and Japan. The earthquake killed approximately 1,655 people and left 2 million homeless.
The deadliest earthquake in recorded history was the 1556 Shaanxi earthquake in China, estimated at magnitude 8.0-8.3, which killed approximately 830,000 people. Many casualties resulted from the collapse of yaodong (cave dwellings) carved into loess cliffs. The 2010 Haiti earthquake (M7.0, ~316,000 deaths) was the deadliest in modern times.
Pre-instrumental earthquake magnitudes are estimated from written accounts of damage, felt reports, geological evidence such as fault scarps and liquefaction features, and tsunami records. These methods provide approximate magnitudes with typical uncertainties of 0.3-0.5 magnitude units.
QuakeFYI's historical database covers earthquakes from approximately 2150 BC to the present, with over 5,700 significant events. Written records from ancient China, Greece, and the Middle East provide some of the earliest accounts. Instrumental recording began around 1900 with the first standardized seismographs.
An earthquake swarm is a sequence of many earthquakes occurring in a localized area over weeks to months without a clear mainshock. Unlike aftershock sequences where one large event is followed by smaller ones, swarms have no single dominant event. They are often associated with volcanic activity or fluid migration in the crust.