EARTH TREMOR SHIVERS JITTERY CANARIES

SANTA CRUZ DE TENERIFE, Friday February 5 2010

A BARELY-detectable seismic tremor shook the canary islands on Friday afternoon, four days after major flooding.

by JAMES TWEEDIE

The six-second quake struck at 3:10pm GMT – local time in the Canaries.

The epicentre of the Richter-magnitude four event was 23 kilometres beneath the seabed between the east coast of Tenerife and neighbouring Gran Canaria, roughly equidistant from the capital Santa Cruz and the small town of Candelaria to the south.

Many residents did not even notice the tremor, and there were no reports of damage or casualties.

But nevertheless the incident caused concern in the volcanic archipelago.

Meanwhile Tenerife's Cabildo government announced the re-opening of part of the road between Buenavista del Norte and Masca, closed since Monday's storm and flooding.

The TF-436 was open between kilometres nine and 17, but was still closed as far as kilometre 22 towards Santiago del Teide.

The TF-21 remained closed between La Orotava and mount Teide (km 34 to 53) and the TF-136 was still closed to traffic from km 5 to km 6.6 near Casas de Afur.

The road works department was still working to clear the closed routes on Friday.

The Cabildo urged motorists to pay attention to temporary road signs, to avoid affected roads and to drive with extreme caution in the affected areas.

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