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Rabat – Using a network of advanced sensors to monitor seismic activities, Morocco is maintaining a vigilant watch on seismic activities within its borders, said Nasser Jebbour, head of the National Geophysics Institute’s National Center for Scientific and Technical Radio (SNRST).
The country is still recovering from the deadly September 8 earthquake that had claimed nearly 3,000 lives and flattened thousands of villages.
In an interview with Morocco World News (MWN), Jebbour said that the September 8 earthquake stood as the “strongest” earthquake recorded in Morocco in recent decades.
He added that the deadly earthquake was attributed to a “reverse fault beneath the high Atlas mountain,” adding that the Al Houaz region is a seismic active region.
For SNRST, the intensity of the Al Houaz earthquake was not something they would have anticipated. “We didn’t think that it could reach this level of severity,” he told MWN.
“More recently, we experienced another earthquake in the Azila region. This was with a magnitude of 5.1,” he added, highlighting the extent of the region’s seismic activity.
The devastating Al Houaz earthquake left a trail of destruction in its wake, claiming nearly 3,000 lives and flattening thousands of villages.
During the interview, Jebbour shed light on how Morocco maintains a vigilant watch on Morocco’s seismic activities within its borders. SNRST currently operates a network of advanced sensors to monitor seismic activities.
“We have the real-time seismic monitoring system here. We receive all the signals from the seismic stations in Morocco in real-time through satellite technology,” he explained, adding that the institution is “in charge of the seismic monitoring in the territory.”
“We have a network of sensors, seismic sensors from which we get signals from all the earthquakes occurring in Morocco,” he added.
The expert explained that all seismic activity in Morocco is caused by the movement of the two plates, the African plate and the Eurasian plate in the western Mediterranean.
Thanks to the advanced technological capabilities, the center is able to “analyze and locate all the earthquakes that are taking place in Morocco in near real-time.”
“After two minutes, we have the location of the earthquakes and the magnitude of these earthquakes. We can then transmit all the information related to the earthquakes to the local and central authorities in Morocco,” he said.
While the Al Houaz earthquake was the deadliest Morocco witnessed in decades, earthquakes are not an unusual occurrence.
Experts say that over the last 1000 years, earthquakes hitting Morocco offshore were mainly concentrated along the Azores-Gibraltar transform fault and the Alboran Sea. Onshore earthquakes would impact the Rif mountains in northern Morocco and the Tell Atlas mountain range in north-western Algeria, though earthquakes affecting the Atlas Belt were much less frequent.
In recent history, Morocco recorded major earthquakes in 1994, 2004, and 2016, with magnitudes ranging between 6.0 and 6.3. The earthquakes were focused both in the most seismically active region in the country and the western Mediterranean region.
In the 1960s, the country witnessed one of its most devastating earthquakes in Agadir, with a magnitude of 6.3. Estimates suggest that between 12,000 and 15,000 people died in the disaster.
