It flattened Messina and Reggio on either side of the strait, and a tsunami finished the waterfronts minutes later. Well over eighty thousand died — one of the deadliest in European history.
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DownloadThe 1908 Messina earthquake struck on December 28, 1908, registering magnitude 7.1 (moment magnitude, Mw). Each whole step on the moment-magnitude scale is roughly 32 times more energy, so this released on the order of 43× the energy of a magnitude 6.0 earthquake.
Its epicenter was located near 37.97°N, 15.49°E, at a depth of about 15 km — a shallow crustal earthquake. Shallow earthquakes like this release their energy close to the surface, which is why the shaking near the epicenter was so violent.
An estimated 80,000 people were killed.