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A violent earthquake on a tourist island in western Greece early Friday morning was felt as far as Athens, but no major damage or injury was immediately reported.
The main port of Zakynthos Island, in the Ionian Sea, was damaged even though it was still functional, said spokesman for the Civil Protection Agency, Spyros Georgiou. Electricity was lost in the island capital and the main city, also called Zakynthos, but no major damage has been reported in this locality.
"We are checking villages on the island, where there are several older buildings," he told the Associated Press. "The lack of electricity is a problem, but the technicians are trying to restore power."
The fire services said that landslides had been reported in another part of the island and that part of the wall of a church had collapsed in the city of Pyrgos, in the south of Peloponnese. A couple of people were treated for minor injuries.
Georgiou said that a tsunami warning had been issued, although none had materialized two hours after the earthquake.
The US geological survey indicated that the submarine earthquake had a magnitude of 6.8 and its epicenter was 33 kilometers southwest of Mouzaki, in the south of the island. It had a depth of 14 kilometers and struck just before 2 am local time (2300 GMT Thursday).
The Institute of Geodynamics of the University of Athens, the leading earthquake monitoring institute in Greece, measured the magnitude at 6.4 and said it had a depth of 5 km. Measures of earthquake intensity may vary depending on the equipment used by each institution and other factors.
Moderate seismic bank and replica also shook the area. The village of Mouzaki is close to the famous tourist resort of Laganas.
The earthquake shook all of western Greece and was deeply felt in the capital, 280 km northeast of Zakynthos.
Greece is located in one of the most earthquake-prone regions of the world, with thousands of earthquakes recorded each year. But few people cause serious injury or damage. In 1999, a magnitude 5.9 earthquake on the outskirts of Athens killed 143 people.
Zakynthos has had severe earthquakes in the past and therefore has a very strict building safety code.
