Earthquakes may be the aspect of Rhodes that will cast a shadow on it as a holiday paradise. The island is situated in an area where the African plate and Eurasian one do collide. Earth crust is crushed into few big and several smaller plates that float on the surface of liquid, melted rocks, called magma. When pieces of the crust collide, or move away from one another masses of energy are relased into the earth crust, rocks trasmit the energy onto the surface and so the earth in Rhodes quakes. The last earthquake that happened there was in July 2008, as reported on the BBC radio, one person was killed when a ceiling of a hall crushed and collapsed.
There are also other hazards connected to earthquakes in this part of the Mediterranean. Bottom of the sea may as well quake: when this happens waters are moved, they become unstable and so another tragedy may occur: a tsunami (the word comes from Japanese). That is when large masses of water are suddenly and violently displaced, there a series of waves that may reach up to few dozen metres height is evoked. Water that moves incredibly fast together with its mass reaches overwhelming momentum and brings chaos as well as destruction to any shore it floods. Fortunately as the islanders are aware of the danger there are special systems of warning and scanning any movements of the crust or waters. In this way inhabitants of the island as well as tourists may feel safe wherever in Rhodes they would find themselves in case of any earthquake or tsunami.