The 28 December 1908 Messina Straits Earthquake (MW 7.1): A Great Earthquake throughout a Century of Seismology

Early in the morning on 28 December 1908, just a few days after Christmas, a severe earthquake struck the Messina Straits, a rather narrow sound that separates Calabria, in southern Italy, from Sicily (Figure 1). The shaking was distinctly felt in Albania, Montenegro, and the Greek Ionian islands, about 400 km to the east and northeast of the Straits; in Malta, about 250 km to the south; and as far as Ustica Island, about 220 km to the west. The earthquake was catastrophic in the epicentral area and was immediately followed by fires and a large tsunami. Messina (Sicily) and Reggio Calabria (Calabria), two significant cities located less than 10 km apart on the two facing shores of the straits, were almost completely destroyed, and buildings were severely damaged over an area in excess of 6,000 km2. Of the population at the time, estimated to number 140,000 at Messina and 45,000 at Reggio Calabria, a significant fraction was reported dead. Assessing the total number of victims has been problematic, as fatality estimates range from 60,000 to more than 100,000, yet 1908 was undeniably the deadliest European earthquake ever and one of the deadliest worldwide. Guidoboni et al. (2007) contend that 80,000 people were killed by the earthquake, including as many as 2,000 who died as a result of the tsunami. Waves up to 12 m struck the shorelines south of Messina and south of Reggio Calabria, displacing the rubble from collapsed buildings and completing the destruction. All communications in the affected area were disrupted, and rescue operations had to rely on access from the sea. Units of the Russian and English navies, already in the area, were the first to offer immediate relief. In particular, medical officers of the Baltic Guard-Marine brought the first medical aid to the …

[1]  Harry Fielding Reid,et al.  The mechanics of the earthquake , 1910 .

[2]  D. Pantosti,et al.  A 125 Kyr‐long geological record of seismic source repeatability: the Messina Straits (southern Italy) and the 1908 earthquake (Ms 71/2) , 1992 .

[3]  K. G. Reichsanstalt.  Jahrbuch der kaiserlich-königlichen geologischen Reichs-anstalt , 1872, Nature.

[4]  S. Tinti,et al.  The Messina Straits tsunami of December 28, 1908: a critical review of experimental data and observations , 1983 .

[5]  Takuo Maruyama,et al.  Static elastic dislocation in an infinite and semi-infinite medium , 1964 .

[6]  Kenji Satake,et al.  Slip distribution of the 1952 Tokachi‐Oki earthquake (M 8.1) along the Kuril Trench deduced from tsunami waveform inversion , 2003 .

[7]  Stefano Lorito,et al.  Rupture Process of the 2004 Sumatra-Andaman Earthquake from Tsunami Waveform Inversion , 2007 .

[8]  S. Tinti,et al.  Finite-element simulations of the 28 december 1908 Messina Straits (Southern Italy) tsunami , 1999 .

[9]  C. Pandolfo,et al.  The 1908 Messina Strait earthquake in the regional geostructural framework , 1986 .

[10]  G. K. Gilbert.  A theory of the earthquakes of the Great Basin, with a practical application , 1884, American Journal of Science.

[11]  H. Jeffreys.  The Rigidity of the Earth's Central Core. , 1926 .

[12]  Gianluca Valensise,et al.  Deformation of the 125 ka marine terrace in Italy: tectonic implications , 1999, Geological Society, London, Special Publications.

[13]  島崎 邦彦,et al.  Historical seismograms and earthquakes of the world , 1988 .

[14]  Göran Ekström,et al.  Evidence of bias in estimations of earthquake size , 1988, Nature.

[15]  S. Duda.  Seismicity of the European Area, Part 2 , 1972, Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America.

[16]  A. Michelini,et al.  Collecting, digitizing, and distributing historical seismological data , 2005 .

[17]  W. E. Galloway,et al.  Reply to the comments of W. Helland-Hansen on "Towards the standardization of sequence stratigraphy" by Catuneanu et al. (Earth-Sciences Review 92(2009)1-33) , 2009 .

[18]  Kenji Satake,et al.  Inversion of tsunami waveforms for the estimation of a fault heterogeneity: Method and numerical experiments. , 1987 .

[19]  Paolo Baldi,et al.  Kinematics of the Western Africa-Eurasia plate boundary from focal mechanisms and GPS data , 2007 .

[20]  D. Pantosti,et al.  Twenty years of paleoseismology in Italy , 2008 .

[21]  F. Omori.  Preliminary Report on the Messina-Reggio Earthquake of Dec. 28, 1908 , 1909 .

[22]  C. Richter.  An instrumental earthquake magnitude scale , 1935 .

[23]  Harry Fielding Reid,et al.  The California Earthquake of April 18, 1906: Report of the State Earthquake Investigation Commission ... , 2010 .

[24]  Barbara Orecchio,et al.  On the cause of the 1908 Messina tsunami, southern Italy , 2008 .

[25]  T. Tin,et al.  Geophysical Research Abstracts , 2007 .

[26]  B. Gutenberg,et al.  Seismicity of the Earth and associated phenomena , 1950, MAUSAM.

[27]  I. Stewart,et al.  The Archaeology of Geological Catastrophes , 2000 .

[28]  D. Giardini,et al.  The December 28, 1908, Messina Straits, southern Italy, earthquake: Waveform modeling of regional seismograms , 2000 .

[29]  R. Basili,et al.  The Database of Individual Seismogenic Sources (DISS), version 3: Summarizing 20 years of research on Italy's earthquake geology , 2008 .

[30]  Paolo Gasparini,et al.  A model for the 1908 Messina Straits (Italy) earthquake by inversion of levelling data , 1988 .

[31]  A. Lomax,et al.  Rupture Process of the 18 April 1906 California Earthquake from Near-Field Tsunami Waveform Inversion , 2008 .

[32]  M. Caputo,et al.  Geophysical and geodetic observations in the messina straits , 1981 .

[33]  Stefano Lorito,et al.  Source process of the September 12, 2007, MW 8.4 southern Sumatra earthquake from tsunami tide gauge record inversion , 2008 .

[34]  Keiiti Aki,et al.  Generation and Propagation of G Waves from the Niigata Earthquake of June 16, 1964. : Part 2. Estimation of earthquake moment, released energy, and stress-strain drop from the G wave spectrum. , 1966 .

[35]  K. Abe,et al.  Revision of magnitudes of large shallow earthquakes, 1897–1912 , 1983 .

[36]  R. Westaway.  Quaternary uplift of southern Italy , 1993 .

[37]  Vít Kárník,et al.  Seismicity of the European area , 1971 .

[38]  B. Gutenberg,et al.  Amplitudes of surface waves and magnitudes of shallow earthquakes , 1945 .

[39]  Società geografica italiana,et al.  La catastrofe sismica Calabro messinese (28 dicembre 1908) , 1911 .

[40]  James W. Dewey,et al.  The early history of seismometry (to 1900) , 1969 .

[41]  P. Scandone,et al.  Seismotectonics of the Calabrian arc , 1982 .

[42]  P. Gasperini,et al.  Catalogo dei forti terremoti in Italia dal 461 a.C. , 1995 .

[43]  Nicola D'Agostino,et al.  Crustal motion along the Eurasia-Nubia plate boundary in the Calabrian Arc and Sicily and active extension in the Messina Straits from GPS measurements , 2004 .

[44]  L. Crescentini,et al.  Source parameters of the 1908 Messina Straits, Italy, earthquake, from geodetic and seismic data. , 2002 .

[45]  F. Ghisetti.  Fault parameters in the Messina Strait (southern Italy) and relations with the seismogenic source , 1992 .

[46]  F. Ghisetti.  Recent deformations and the seismogenic source in the Messina Strait (Southern Italy) , 1984 .

[47]  G. Valensise,et al.  Aims and methods in territorial archaeology: possible clues to a strong fourth-century AD earthquake in the Straits of Messina (southern Italy) , 2000, Geological Society, London, Special Publications.

[48]  B. Gutenberg.  Amplitudes of P, PP, and S and magnitude of shallow earthquakes , 1945 .

[49]  M. S. Barbano,et al.  Discrimination of Tsunami Sources (Earthquake versus Landslide) on the Basis of Historical Data in Eastern Sicily and Southern Calabria , 2008 .

[50]  J. Ritter.  On the recording characteristics of the original Wiechert seismographs at Göttingen (Germany) , 2002 .

[51]  K. Abe.  Magnitudes of large shallow earthquakes from 1904 to 1980 , 1981 .

[52]  G. Natale,et al.  A Variable Slip Fault Model For the 1908 Messina Straits (Italy) Earthquake, By Inversion of Levelling Data , 1991 .

[53]  Regional relationships among earthquake magnitude scales , 1981 .

[54]  Gianluca Valensise,et al.  CFTI4Med, Catalogue of Strong Earthquakes in Italy (461 B.C.-1997) and Mediterranean Area (760 B.C.-1500) , 2007 .

[55]  Anthony Lomax,et al.  A Reanalysis of the Hypocentral Location and Related Observations for the Great 1906 California Earthquake , 2005 .

[56]  Charles L. Taylor,et al.  Seismicity and uplift of southern Italy , 1975 .

[57]  B. Gutenberg.  Ueber Erdbebenwellen. VII A. Beobachtungen an Registrierungen von Fernbeben in Göttingen und Folgerung über die Konstitution des Erdkörpers (mit Tafel) , 1914 .