Earthquake in Limassol and Paphos, Cyprus

An earthquake of magnitude 4.5 on the Richter scale shook Cyprus on August 25th (Tuesday). The epicentre was pretty close to Limassol, occurring near Amathus. But, nothing much happened because of this, just that people were shaken up a bit!
In fact, Cyprus is very close to a highly seismic zone. There is a major fault running through (or very near to) Cyprus. You can actually see the fault. If you go to lady’s mile beach (on the road from My Mall), you turn right at the T-junction to go to Akrotiri lake whereas to the left, the road stops. If you wade into the beach from just to the right of the t-junction, you should see a drop of a feet or so on the sea floor within a few metres from the shore. This is a faultline. This goes in a diagonal direction towards the sea , so goes further in as you go on lady’s mile beach towards Akrotiri. I accidentally noticed this. Once i was snorkelling close to the shore (close – very close as i dont know the ABCs of swimming) and i drifted off a bit. Suddenly, i saw the sea floor much deeper than i would have liked it to be. I panicked and waded towards the shore. Then i noticed the sharp drop on the floor.
Cyprus has had its share of mild earthquakes before. In the late 90s, there was a medium intensity earthquake, the effects of which can be seen on some of the old residential apartments on the beach road. I hope that there are no after-shocks of this earthquake, except the artificial ones to be created by the Israelis!!