According to the regional secretary for the Environment and Climate Action, Alonso Miguel, who oversees Civil Protection, the situation "is being duly monitored" by the regional executive and monitored by the Azores Seismovolcanic Information and Surveillance Center (CIVISA).

Seismic activity to the south of the municipality of Povoação, on the island of São Miguel, intensified between Wednesday and Thursday, with 18 tremors recorded in these two days, according to data made available on the CIVISA website and consulted today by the Lusa news agency.

"It is a known, well-identified seismogenic zone, which has a historical record of occurrences and, therefore, it is normal for earthquakes to be felt, given that the installed monitoring capacity, which is now greater, also gives us these higher numbers and this greater recording capacity", Alonso Simões told journalists today in Ponta Delgada, on the sidelines of the ceremony to hand over two emergency ambulances to the local fire department.

Despite the "slight decline" in the frequency of earthquakes, he assured that the Regional Government will continue to monitor the situation and appealed for calm: "we need to remain calm, not to be alarmed because the capacity to monitor and follow up on this situation is truly great".

In Alonso Miguel's opinion, it is important to "have the ability to monitor and transmit information to the public in a transparent manner (...), given that, at this time, this activity is normal in an area with historical records and which is a well-known and well-identified seismogenic zone".

"We began to register an increase in activity on the evening of June 3. This increase in activity intensified as of yesterday [Wednesday] and, since then, we have already registered several hundred events, with at least 14 earthquakes being felt by the population", CIVISA researcher Rita Carmo told Lusa on Thursday.

According to the researcher, since the increase in seismic activity, the strongest tremor recorded occurred on Thursday at 8:24 am local time, approximately 15 kilometers south of the municipality of Povoação, and was felt with a maximum intensity of 3.4 on the Richter scale.

The researcher said that these are common events, given the geodynamic framework of the Azores archipelago, at the junction of three tectonic plates (North American Plate, Eurasian Plate and African Plate), which is why the population often feels some earthquakes throughout the year.

"It is related to our context in the tectonic dynamics of plates. In the Azores region, namely the Central and Eastern group, we are in a border area between two lithospheric plates, the Eurasian plate, which is north of the Azores, and the African plate, which is to the south", she explained.

Rita Carmo said that it is "natural" that the situation may "take a few more days to stabilize".

On its website, CIVISA calls on the population to fill out the survey available at: www.ivar.azores.gov.br/inquerito-macrossismica, if they feel an earthquake.