Malaga’s earthquake emergency plan approved as the Costa del Sol city faces high seismic risk

MALAGA Town Hall has approved an earthquake emergency plan as the risk increases. The green light was given to a document that defines the framework for emergency procedures as a high seismic risk weighs down on the city.

The risk was highlighted by a seismic map published by the National Institute of Geography in 2015. The map indicated that Malaga is the second city with the highest seismic risk in Spain and small tremors are already common in the municipality.

The plan has taken around five years to develop and establishes ‘planning, coordination and management of all public and private services related to an earthquake emergency’. It also maps out the necessary measures for mobilising human and material resources in the case of a catastrophe.

Head of the Civil Protection Service, Juan Benitez, noted that one of the main advances had been the detailed analysis of all the buildings in the municipality, which in total are 52,000. To undertake this arduous labour, land registry databases with information on the year of construction and state of conservation were used.