Torrevieja’s tourism ‘increases its vulnerability’ during earthquakes

A REPORT has warned that Costa Blanca resort Torrevieja’s tourism model has left the city poorly prepared to cope with earthquakes.
Professor of Sociology at the University of Alicante (UA), Antonio Aledo, warns that, “because of real estate speculation and management of public budgets based on income from the real estate business,” the city has “forgotten the seismic threat in Torrevieja.”
The study analysed the seismic risk and said that the “technological solution proposed in its Municipal Action Plan against earthquakes does not seem enough.”
The UA professor added: “The residential tourism model implemented in Torrevieja has not only created economic risk by the crisis in the construction and social risk as the poorest municipality in Spain according to the National Statistics Institute, but it has also increased the city’s seismic vulnerability.”
The report, ‘The unquestionable risk: social vulnerability and seismic risk in tourist towns’ has been published in the Journal of Tourism. In a bid to form new strategies to prevent and mitigate risks, the report says better information and education for the general population, including foreign residents and tourists, about earthquakes is fundamental in limiting damage and risk.
Torrevieja’s major earthquake in 1829 killed 389 people. Since then it regularly records numerous quakes. The last noticeable one was January 2 2015 when the city recorded an earthquake measuring 1.6 on the Richter scale.