WASHINGTON, Sept 28 (Reuters) - European researchers said on Monday they found the source of an earthquake that killed nearly 300 people and destroyed a medieval Italian town in April and more quakes could come in the region.They used remote sensing and other methods to trace the magnitude 6.3 quake to the Paganica fault, northeast of the town of L'Aquila. The fault had been thought to be less dangerous than other faults, the researchers reported in Geophysical Research Letters. "Static stress calculations show that the earthquake has imparted stress changes on other nearby active faults, bringing several of them, most notably the Montereale and Campotosto faults, closer to failure," a team led by Barry Parsons of Britain's University of Oxford and a group at the Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanogia in Rome wrote. It "continues to represent a seismic hazard in the region." The April quake badly damaged L'Aquila, the capital of the Abruzzo region of Italy, and several surrounding towns and villages, killing 297 people, injuring 1,000 and making 66,000 homeless. The researchers used two techniques -- a type of radar interferometry and body wave seismology -- along with remote sensing and field measurements to make their calculations. The two most dangerous faults are near the Italian towns of Campotosto and Amatrice, they said, adding that they may have caused some strong aftershocks three days after the main quake. The study can be found at http://dx.doi.org/10.1029/2009GL039337 (Editing by Cynthia Osterman)
Rescue workers cross unstable wreckage after making contact with a mock victim during an earthquake simulation drill in Guatemala City September 25, 2009. REUTERS/Daniel LeClair (GUATEMALA DISASTER) ...
