Spain's Worst Quake Since 1954 Precedes EU Nuclear Decision - 4.4 and 5.2

Spain's Worst Quake Since 1954 Precedes EU Nuclear Decision - 4.4 and 5.2 May 12 (Bloomberg) -- Spain's biggest earthquake in 57 years damaged a town and killed eight people, a day before European officials decide on safety checks for atomic plants in response to Japan's quake-related nuclear disaster. Temblors measuring 4.4 and 5.2 yesterday injured 167 people, three seriously, the prime minister's office said in a statement on its website. They were centered in Lorca, a town in the Mediterranean coastal province of Murcia, and caused a "large amount" of damage to property, the government said. European nuclear officials today are set to decide on parameters for safety inspections on atomic power plants in response to the Japanese nuclear crisis caused by a March 11 earthquake and tsunami. Spain's Cofrentes reactor, about 180 kilometers (112 miles) south of Lorca, was undamaged and operating normally, a spokeswoman at the plant said today. The earthquake was the strongest since 1954 when a temblor of about magnitude 6 struck near Granada, southern Spain, according to Pedro Jauregui, a seismologist at the Seismic Registry Unit at the University of Alicante in Spain. That measurement is approximate, he said in a telephone interview. The U.S. Geological Survey reports the Spanish earthquake in that year at 7.9 and lists it as the country's biggest on record. The USGS reported yesterday's second temblor at 5.1. Europe has suffered fewer major earthquakes that nations including Japan that lie on the so-called Ring of Fire, an arc of volcanoes and fault times surrounding the Pacific Basin. Campaign Suspended Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero suspended the campaign today for regional elections in 13 of Spain's 17 states, including Murcia, in response to the disaster and sent 225 members of the military emergency unit to the site, his office said in a statement. Deputy Prime Minister Alfredo Perez Rubalcaba today will visit the area, where Zapatero said that 140 emergency vehicles are helping in the rescue. The quakes caused "significant" damage to infrastructure, heritage sites and housing, and the government has sent 800 soldiers and policemen to the area, Zapatero said. The government will "spare no expense" in the reconstruction of the town, he told a televised news conference in Madrid today. The quake in Lorca, whose medieval-era castle sits on a ridge where Christians and Muslims battled in the Reconquest, now threatens Murcia's efforts to reorder its public finances as Spain tries to rein in the euro region's third-largest budget deficit and shield its economy from the sovereign debt crisis. Poorest Region Murcia is one of Spain's poorest regions in terms of gross domestic product per capita, according to the National Statistics Institute. The state had the second-largest budget deficit last year at 5 percent of its economic output. Spanish public television showed images of cars crushed under debris and chunks of stone fallen from the facade of the church in Lorca. A field hospital was set up in the town of more than 85,000 people as officials evacuated about 270 patients from a hospital after the building was damaged during the quakes, the Associated Press reported. An alignment of planets yesterday provoked speculation in Italy that a major earthquake would hit Rome. The talk was fed by discussions of the work of the late Raffaele Bendandi, a self-taught seismologist who believed that quakes could be predicted by observing the combined movements of the planets, the sun and the moon. More than 24,000 people were killed or left missing after Japan was struck by the magnitude-9 earthquake and resulting tsunami on March 11. New Zealand's southern city of Christchurch was hit by earthquakes in September and February. The 6.3- magnitude temblor in February killed more than 170 people.