Powerful Quake Sends Thousands Fleeing
Thousands of residents slept in the open, fearful of returning to their beds as aftershocks rocked the region.
"It felt like the building was going to fall down and it went on for a long time, the trembling," Johana Neves, manager of the Tivoli Hotel in Mozambique's main port city of Beira, 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."
The U.S. Geological Survey said the quake struck at 12:19 a.m. with a magnitude of 7.5—one capable of widespread and heavy damage—and was centered 140 miles southwest of Beira. It shook buildings in Beira and Maputo, Mozambique's capital, and the Zimbabwean cities of Masvingo and Mutare. The temblor awoke people hundreds of miles away in Harare, Zimbabwe's capital, and as far away as Durban on South Africa's Indian Ocean coast.
Mozambican and Zimbabwe authorities reported surprisingly little damage, apparently because the epicenter was in remote and sparsely populated farmlands near the border with Zimbabwe.
"That same size earthquake in a populated area would probably cause quite considerable damage," said William Leith of the U.S. Geographic Survey's Earthquake Hazards Program.
Esperanca Dias, Mozambique's minister of mineral resources, told state television some buildings were damaged in Beira and the walls of some buildings collapsed in Chimoyo, north of the quake's center.
Two people were killed in farm towns near the epicenter, she said.
A little girl tripped and fell as she rushed downstairs from a seventh floor apartment in Espungabera, and died of injuries on the spot, Dias said. And a man was buried in rubble when a wall of his home collapsed in Machaze.
She said at least 11 people were injured, one seriously when he panicked and jumped from the third floor window of a Beira hotel.
Beira was without electricity earlier Thursday and so were some suburbs of Maputo, the seaside capital, where the quake uprooted several power pylons.
It shook every corner of Mozambique and was felt strongly in Maputo, in the far south, where tall office and apartment buildings swayed and hundreds of panicked residents fled into the streets.
During the night, national energy director Elias Daudi went on state radio to urge people not to return to buildings because of possible aftershocks.
In Beira, people were so frightened they refused to go back into buildings Thursday morning even as a light rain was falling.
Rosa Silva, governor of Maputo province, said the government was concerned there might be serious aftershocks and had asked South Africa for help monitoring seismic activity.
At least five aftershocks were recorded immediately and more were expected in coming days because of the quake's size, said Rafael Abreu of the Geographic Survey.
President Armando Guebuza broadcast a message to the nation Thursday afternoon saying the government still was taking stock.
The quake was felt in oil fields some 120 miles from the epicenter, but there was no damage, said Johann van Rheede, spokesman for South African company SASOL, which produces natural gas there.
In Tete province, J.J. Constantino of the World Food Program said many people had slept in the fields.
Tete also is home to one of the world's largest hydroelectric dams, the Cabora Bassa which covers 1,095 square miles. A reporter at the dam said the earthquake was felt and people also abandoned their homes to sleep outside, but that there were no immediate reports of damage.
The quake was unusual for Mozambique, one of the world's poorest countries where natural disaster usually takes the form of flooding. Floods killed at least 13 people this month and more than 800 in 2000 and 2001.
The temblor struck near the southern end of the East Africa rift system, a seismically active zone which has produced quakes measuring magnitude 7.6. Thursday's was shallow, which increases the potential for damage, said Dale Grant, a geophysicist with the Geographic Survey.
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USGS earthquake information: http://earthquake.usgs.gov/eqcenter/recenteqsww/
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