A powerful earthquake struck Mozambique early on Thursday morning, shaking buildings and forcing people from hundreds of kilometres around to dash into the streets for safety. There were no immediate reports of injury.
Buildings swayed and doors shook across the southeast African nation to towns bordering South Africa, Zambia and Zimbabwe, but there was no immediate word of injuries.
The United States Geological Survey said the magnitude 7,5 quake had an epicentre 224km southwest of Mozambique’s main port of Beira at 12.19am on Thursday (22.19pm GMT Wednesday). It was felt as far away as Durban, on South Africa’s coast, and Harare, in central Zimbabwe.
A magnitude of seven is considered a major earthquake capable of widespread and heavy damage.
Elias Daudi, Mozambique’s national director of energy, said on state radio early on Thursday that authorities still do not have any information on casualties or the extent of the damage. He also urged people not to return to their buildings because of possible aftershocks.
At least five aftershocks were immediately recorded and more were expected in the coming days because of the quake’s size, said Rafael Abreu, of the USGS’s National Earthquake Information Centre in Golden, Colorado.
The temblor occurred near the southern end of the East African rift system, a seismically active zone. Since 1900, the largest quake measured on the rift system had a magnitude-7,6, according to the USGS website.
Mozambican state radio said the quake was centered near Espungabera, a small farming town in a remote and sparsely populated area near the border with Zimbabwe. The quake shook buildings and sent frightened people into the streets in Mutare and Masvingo, two Zimbabwean cities about 160km from the epicentre. There were no reports of damage in Zimbabwe.
The quake was also felt more than 1 000km away in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe’s second largest city.
In Beira, a hotel manager said mainly South African tourists had run terrified from their rooms when the building began moving.
Tivoli Hotel manager Johana Neves said nobody was hurt and nothing was damaged in the hotel.
”It felt like the building was going to fall down and it went on for a long time, the trembling,” she said by telephone. ”It felt like you were in a boat, it was shaking everything yet, it’s strange, nothing is broken, even the windows.”
She said panicked guests had returned to their rooms. But Antonio Dinis, who also works at the hotel, said the streets were full of people afraid to go back home or sleep.
In Maputo, hundreds of people also fled their homes for the street, as they did in Chimoyo, about 480km from Beira near the border with Zimbabwe, and Tete, neighbouring Zambia and Malawi, the Mozambique radio station said.
Storms and flooding killed at least 13 people this month in Mozambique, where the United Nations warned that natural disasters, food shortages and high HIV/Aids rates were threatening the country’s chances of throwing off the shackles of a long civil war.
Mozambique, one of the world’s poorest countries, suffers from frequent flooding. In 2000 and 2001, floods killed more than 800 people, left hundreds of thousands homeless and severely damaged roads and bridges.
The quake was shallow, which increases the potential for damage, said Dale Grant, a geophysics with the USGS National Earthquake Information Centre, which is a clearinghouse for temblors worldwide.
”It was felt very widely in the epicentral area, though it’s not a very heavily populated area,” Grant said. ”There is certain to be damage, but so far, we’ve had absolutely no word of damage.” – Sapa-AP