Ten-year-old Zimbabwean Dianna Matika, who had a heart ailment, is one of the confirmed fatalities after an earthquake measuring 7,5 on the Richter scale hit Southern Africa in the early hours of Thursday morning.
The girl from the eastern Zimbabwean city of Mutare died three minutes after the quake struck. A relative, Polite Zhoya, who lives in Harare, said it was “most likely the shock was too much for her”. Two deaths — a child and a sick person — were also reported in Mozambique.
The earthquake’s epicentre was in Espungabera, a sparsely populated farming town in Mozambique near the border shared with Zimbabwe. There are no reports of buildings being damaged in Maputo, but 15 people in the city were injured, mostly while trying to get out of buildings in panic. In Espungabero, 13 injuries have been confirmed. Officials in Mozambique’s Manica province — where the earthquake was centred — were assessing damage, but communication was difficult, said provincial governor Raimundo Diomba.
Storms and flooding killed at least 13 people this month in Mozambique, where the United Nations warned that natural disasters, food shortages and high Aids rates were threatening the country’s chances of throwing off the shackles of a long civil war.
The quake was also felt in Gorongoza, a town more than 100km northwest of Beira, the busy Mozambican port city. “My house was shaking for about 30 seconds. Initially I thought it was the air conditioner, so when I switched it off I was surprised that the building was still shaking,” said Albert Dube, a civil engineering contractor. “When I tried to open the door, it was also shaking.”
Said a banker in Harare: “I had just finished watching the Barcelona-Chelsea match and was about to go to bed, and then the building began shaking. I ran out of the house; the street was full of people. It was something. Some were even praying.”
The earthquake was felt as far as Bulawayo, 1 000km away, as well as on the South African east coast.
In Beira, hotel manager Johana Neves said tourists at her hotel had run out, scared, when the building began moving. “It felt like the building was going to fall down and it went on for a long time, the trembling. It felt like you were in a boat, it was shaking everything. Yet, it’s strange, nothing is broken, [not] even the windows.” Antonio Dinis, who also works at the hotel, said the streets were full of people afraid to go back home or to sleep.
In Maputo, hundreds of people fled their homes for the street, as they did in Chimoio, 480km from Beira.
About five aftershocks were recorded immediately after the earthquake first struck. More have been predicted in the coming days because of the quake’s size, said Rafael Abreu of the Colorado-based United States Geological Survey.