GNGTS 2024 - Atti del 42° Convegno Nazionale

Session 1.1 GNGTS 2024 In recent years we acquired some sparse informaton suggestng that this event may be underestmated in the study by Patanè and Imposa (1995). These authors reconstructed the macroseismic feld relying on oral testmonies collected more than 30 years afer the event, and by very few other sources (two editons of the local newspaper La Sicilia of 3 and 20 March 1952, and a technical report). For this reason, we decided to revise it startng from zero with a new historical investgaton. Fig. 1 – a) Main historical earthquakes associated with the S. Tecla fault and related seismic history (from htps:// doi.org/10.13127/cmte ) ; b) front page of the local newspaper Corriere di Sicilia (24-3-1952), reportng the frst tent camp set in Linera and the visit of the Minister of the Interior. The historical sources In order to revise the 1952 seismic sequence, we followed a strategy tested during the revision of other historical events, partcularly the complex sequence of 1968 in western Sicily (see methodological approach in Azzaro et al., 2020). In brief, we performed a search of the contemporaneous sources and classifed informaton as we were simulatng, a-posteriori , a macroseismic survey carried out day-by-day. In this way we were able to follow in detail the evoluton of the sequence and the progression of damage efects on the territory. To this end, we searched the potental sources in diferent repositories such as local or government archives, municipal libraries, ecclesial archives etc. As a result, we collected a wide spectrum of sources (Fig. 2): coeval scientfc papers, macroseismic questonnaires (seismic postcards or Cartoline macrosismiche ), archive documents, local diaries and newspapers. As regards the later, local press is a valuable source of informaton since news on earthquakes’ efects and rescue operatons are published daily. In additon, as for other earthquakes of “modern epoch”, photographs and two Isttuto Luce videos were also retrieved.