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MOZAMBIQUE: Earthquakes: Not a Matter of If, But When

Armando Nenane

MAPUTO, Apr 5 2010 (IPS) - Time is everything in responding to a natural disaster. Mozambique’s disaster management specialists are worried that they are missing key data on the small tremors that take place almost daily in the quake-prone country.

Three of Mozambique’s five seismic detection stations are out of order, their seismographs damaged months ago by lightning and rains.

“An earthquake like Haiti’s could happen in Mozambique because we are in a highly (active) seismic region,” said Elias Daude, head of the National Directorate of Geology (known by its Portuguese acronym, DNG).

Mozambique is at one end of the East African Rift System, a 3,000-kilometre long strip of land, 50-60 km wide, stretching from from northern Ethiopia to the Zambezi River.

The Rift is an unusual example of an active continental plate drifting apart, in the process generating earthquakes like the ones that shook Mozambique’s Manica province in 2006 and neighboring Malawi and Tanzania in 2009.

Around midnight on Feb. 22 2006, an earthquake measuring 7.2 in the Richter scale occurred, with its epicentre in Machaze district, in Manica province, bordering Zimbabwe.

This is the same magnitude as the earthquake that devastated Haiti in January, killing 200,000 people and destroying its capital. The recent earthquake in Chile measured 8.

Carlos Froi is a primary school teacher who lives 50 kms away from the earthquake epicenter in Machaze. He recalls how his bed shook. “I jumped out of the window, half-dressed, amidst the general panic,” he told IPS.

The quake in Machaze caused four deaths, wounded 27 people and damaged 160 buildings, according to the United States Geological Service.

The scale of damage was much smaller in Machaze because this rural area is sparsely populated, with 90,000 people in 83 villages. The traditional mud-and-pole huts also resisted the quake better than concrete dwellings would have.

“If the strongest tremor in Machaze had happened in a provincial capital, I have no doubt that the situation would have been similar to Haiti,” said Abdul Magid, a seismic monitoring technician with the DNG.

Improved response

After 2006, the government invested in technical improvements at the DNG, moving from manual to digital analysis of seismic data sent from the provinces to Maputo.

This year, new technology will speed the process to five minutes instead of 30, thus improving the response capacity, explained Paulino Feitio, Mozambique’s first and only earthquake specialist. The Machaze earthquake drove Feitio, a geologist by profession, to complete a degree at the International Institute of Seismology in Japan.

Feitio told IPS that a minimum of five seismic detection stations are needed in Mozambique. The damaged seismographs, belatedly sent for repairs in neighbouring South Africa, are from Maputo, Nampula and Niassa provinces, while those in Manica and Tete provinces are working normally. Four more stations are planned for 2010, each costing around US$38,000.

Quick response crucial

Joao Ribeiro, director of the National Institute for Disaster Managemen, explains that the first 20 minutes after a disaster are crucial to save lives, and 80 percent of search and rescue tasks are a local effort.

Ribeiro’s Institute operates a centre near Maputo’s international airport, which is open round-the-clock, ready to direct the response to any natural emergency in close coordination with the DNG.

“We are a poor country, we cannot build lots of infrastructure but what we can do is prepare our people to better react to a disaster,” Ribeiro says said.

After heavy floods hit Mozambique in 2000, the Institute set up 405 local risk management committees, consisting of 10-15 residents who are trained in identifying signs of a disaster, first aid, evacuation and shelter.

In May, the Institute will carry out earthquake simulations in two schools in Maputo, and will later extend the exercise to other provinces and include earthquake information in the school curriculum.

“The idea is to marry tradition and science so people can understand better the problems they face,” said Ribeiro.

Machaze is already benefiting. “Now we place beams in concrete houses and reinforce the traditional huts,” said Froi. He added that village planning is more rigorous and building rules are followed.

In Machaze, people thought the earthquake was God’s punishment or provoked by spirits and ancestors. Today, after awareness talks, half of the locals accept that it is a natural phenomenon, said Froi.

Adequate information helps people react adequately, for it is panic that kills most in an earthquake, explained Feitio.

He believes that Mozambique is still poorly prepared for an earthquake similar to those in Haiti and Chile. He would like to see improvements in the building codes, mandatory compliance from construction companies, reinforcement of existing buildings and better preparation of local people.

There is no time to lose.

“A major earthquake disaster in the region is inevitable; it is not a question of if, but when,” said Dr. Christ Hartnady, an expert with the South African consultancy Umvoto and former professor of geology at the University of Cape Town.

He predicts that in the event of another major quake, major urban areas on or near the Rift System, including the Mozambican port city of Beira, the Malawian city of Blantyre, the Tanzanian capital Dar es Salaam, and even Kenya’s capital, Nairobi could be badly affected.


“The consequences would be so expensive in terms of mortality and economic cost that the risk of being ill-prepared is unacceptably high,” he concluded.