Historic seismicity and municipal documentation: Lorca

Abstract

Archive documents provide the main source of information concerning historic earthquakes, their chronology and global effects when they occurred before the instrumental period. Nevertheless, exhaustive consultations of documents and detailed studies of them have hardly ever been undertaken. The recent earthquakes at Lorca have stimulated an effort to transcribe all the documents dealing with seismic events in the region and also to analyse in depth the wealth of files regarding the 1674 Lorca earthquake, with the aim of fully characterizing its effects. The register of damage appraisal has allowed us to draw up graphics and tables showing the magnitude of the natural disaster: 1,683 buildings were inspected, of which 1,178 were damaged, to an overall value of 3,762,780 reales, 479 were devastated, to a value of 2,107,600 reales, and 26 suffered no harm. According to the type of building involved, 97 percent belonged to housing (4,757,230 reales), 2 percent to urban infrastructures (458,050 reales) and 1 percent to religious buildings (655,100 reales). We also offer guidelines to the kind of local documents offering information on these events together with suggestions as to how to find complementary information in other archives within the Spanish system.