World Earthquake alert : M 6.8 :MOROCCO, Fri, 08 Sep 2023 22:11:01

[BGS]

World Earthquake alert : M 6.8 :MOROCCO, Fri, 08 Sep 2023 22:11:01

Click for details... (http://earthquakes.bgs.ac.uk/earthquakes/recent_events/20230908221352.html)

[Parsi-X]

Prayers for the people of Morocco.

[pyrangello]

Ditto the prayers as of last night death toll was just under 300.

[Tam]

Death Toll is currently at 1,300 and counting.

https://apnews.com/article/morocco-earthquake-live-updates-eab8c4fb1709772071d7d93557f8a272

Horrible.

[SpookyMulder]

per province/prefecture below:

- Al-Haouz province: 694 deaths
- Taroudant province: 347 deaths
- Chichaoua province: 191 deaths
- Ouarzazate province: 39 deaths
- Marrakech prefect: 14 deaths

There are missing people as well, as per the news there it could be counted in the hundreds if not more. No death reported in the region of Azilal, Agadir Ida Outanane, Grand Casablanca, Youssoufia and Tinghir..

[Gwin Ru]

...

... Powerful quake in Morocco kills more than 2,000 people and damages historic buildings in Marrakech (https://apnews.com/article/morocco-earthquake-marraskesh-7f4a503009dede0dec0208c08d6b100b)

Video at: https://apnews.com/68345c7edd824682bdceaed37931f7cc

A rare, powerful earthquake struck Morocco late Friday night, killing more than 1,000 people and damaging buildings from villages in the Atlas Mountains to the historic city of Marrakech. (Sept. 9)

By SAM METZ and MOSA’AB ELSHAMY
Updated 12:03 AM GMT+2, September 10, 2023

MARRAKECH, Morocco (AP) — A rare, powerful earthquake struck Morocco (https://apnews.com/article/morocco-earthquake-live-updates-eab8c4fb1709772071d7d93557f8a272), sending people racing from their beds into the streets and toppling buildings in mountainous villages and ancient cities not built to withstand such force. More than 2,000 people were killed, and the toll was expected to rise as rescuers struggled Saturday to reach hard-hit remote areas.

The magnitude 6.8 quake, the biggest to hit (https://apnews.com/article/morocco-earthquake-deadliest-temblor-bcdadebd8b1b06b12ac5e88cd4638262) the North African country in 120 years, sent people fleeing their homes in terror and disbelief late Friday. One man said dishes and wall hangings began raining down, and people were knocked off their feet. The quake brought down walls made from stone and masonry, covering whole communities with rubble.

The devastation gripped each town along the High Atlas’ steep and winding switchbacks in similar ways: homes folding in on themselves and mothers and fathers crying as boys and helmet-clad police carried the dead through the streets.

Remote villages like those in the drought-stricken Ouargane Valley were largely cut off from the world when they lost electricity and cellphone service. By midday, people were outside mourning neighbors, surveying the damage on their camera phones and telling one another “May God save us.”


https://dims.apnews.com/dims4/default/ca0c959/2147483647/strip/true/crop/8640x5755+0+2/resize/599x399!/quality/90/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fassets.apnews.com%2F00%2Fa0%2Fdf9a270df9e713d03eee17bf144a%2F8e21e9e63bc54c3a8b10 7926cc0f3797 (https://apnews.com/article/morocco-powerful-earthquake-marrakech-a927c7d286bf6e1047feb1c91ab96fd1)
A magnitude 3.9 aftershock rattles Morocco as rescuers seek survivors in ancient cities and towns (https://apnews.com/article/morocco-powerful-earthquake-marrakech-a927c7d286bf6e1047feb1c91ab96fd1)




https://dims.apnews.com/dims4/default/8414ef7/2147483647/strip/true/crop/8640x5755+0+2/resize/599x399!/quality/90/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fassets.apnews.com%2F59%2Fef%2F5d146650d42cd6b680bf5e532568%2Fa4768d0282ad419cad43 503bfb95df95 (https://apnews.com/article/morocco-earthquake-village-52cc12e8b556bc86970fff8575e79581)
Moroccan villagers mourn after earthquake brings destruction to their rural mountain home (https://apnews.com/article/morocco-earthquake-village-52cc12e8b556bc86970fff8575e79581)





https://dims.apnews.com/dims4/default/fa3f56d/2147483647/strip/true/crop/8640x5755+0+2/resize/599x399!/quality/90/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fassets.apnews.com%2F60%2Fd0%2F9a934df9b0742b47c405b934cd3d%2Fd40799e03a4c427cae9e 20dd3cc901ca (https://apnews.com/article/morocco-earthquake-deadliest-temblor-bcdadebd8b1b06b12ac5e88cd4638262)
Morocco earthquake: A look at the deadliest quakes over the past 25 years (https://apnews.com/article/morocco-earthquake-deadliest-temblor-bcdadebd8b1b06b12ac5e88cd4638262)


Hamid Idsalah, a 72-year-old mountain guide, said he and many others remained alive but had little future to look forward to. That was true in the short-term — with remnants of his kitchen reduced to dust — and in the long-term — where he and many others lack the financial means to rebound.
“I can’t reconstruct my home. I don’t know what I’ll do. Still, I’m alive, so I’ll wait,” he said as he walked through the desert oasis town overlooking red rock hills, packs of goats and a glistening salt lake. “I feel heartsick.”
In historic Marrakech, people could be seen on state TV clustering in the streets , afraid to go back inside buildings that might still be unstable. The city’s famous Koutoubia Mosque, built in the 12th century, was damaged, but the extent was not immediately clear. Its 69-meter (226-foot) minaret is known as the “roof of Marrakech.” Moroccans also posted videos showing damage to parts of the famous red walls that surround the old city, a UNESCO World Heritage site.

At least 2,012 people died in the quake, mostly in Marrakech and five provinces near the epicenter, Morocco’s Interior Ministry reported Saturday night. At least 2,059 more people were injured — 1,404 critically — the ministry said.
“The problem is that where destructive earthquakes (https://apnews.com/hub/earthquakes) are rare, buildings are simply not constructed robustly enough to cope with strong ground shaking, so many collapse, resulting in high casualties,” said Bill McGuire, professor emeritus of geophysical and climate hazards at University College London.
In a sign of the huge scale of the disaster, Morocco’s King Mohammed VI ordered the armed forces to mobilize specialized search and rescue teams and a surgical field hospital, according to a statement from the military.

The king said he would visit the hardest hit area Saturday, but despite an outpouring of offers of help from around the world, the Moroccan government had not formally asked for assistance, a step required before outside rescue crews could deploy.

The epicenter of Friday’s tremor was near the town of Ighil in Al Haouz Province, roughly 70 kilometers (44 miles) south of Marrakech. Al Haouz is known for scenic villages and valleys tucked in the High Atlas Mountains.

Police, emergency vehicles and people fleeing in shared taxis spent hours traversing unpaved roads through the High Atlas in stop-and-go traffic, often exiting their cars to help clear giant boulders from routes known to be rugged and difficult long before Friday’s earthquake. In Ijjoukak, a village in the area surrounding Toubkal, North Africa’s tallest peak, residents estimated nearly 200 buildings had been leveled.

Couch cushions, electric cords and grapes were strewn in giant piles of rubble alongside dead sheep, houseplants and doors wedged between boulders. Relatives from the town and those who had driven from major cities cried while they wondered who to call as they reckoned with the aftermath and a lack of food and water.

“It felt like a bomb went off,” 34-year-old Mohamed Messi said.

Morocco will observe three days of national mourning with flags at half-staff on all public facilities, the official news agency MAP reported.

World leaders offered to send in aid or rescue crews as condolences poured in from countries in Europe, the Middle East and the Group of 20 summit in India. The president of Turkey, which lost tens of thousands of people in a massive earthquake earlier this year, was among those proposing assistance. France and Germany, with large populations of people of Moroccan origin, also offered to help, and the leaders of both Ukraine and Russia expressed support for Moroccans.

In an exceptional move, neighboring rival Algeria offered to open its airspace to allow eventual humanitarian aid or medical evacuation flights to travel to and from Morocco. Algeria closed the airspace when its government severed diplomatic ties with Morocco in 2021 over a series of issues. The countries have a decadeslong dispute involving the territory of Western Sahara.

The U.S. Geological Survey said the quake had a preliminary magnitude of 6.8 when it hit at 11:11 p.m. (22:11 GMT), with shaking that lasted several seconds. The U.S. agency reported a magnitude 4.9 aftershock hit 19 minutes later. The collision of the African and Eurasian tectonic plates occurred at a relatively shallow depth, which makes a quake more dangerous.

Earthquakes are relatively rare in North Africa. Lahcen Mhanni, Head of the Seismic Monitoring and Warning Department at the National Institute of Geophysics, told 2M TV that the earthquake was the strongest ever recorded in the region.

In 1960, a magnitude 5.8 tremor struck near the Moroccan city of Agadir and caused thousands of deaths. That quake prompted changes in construction rules in Morocco, but many buildings, especially rural homes, are not built to withstand such tremors.

In 2004, a 6.4 magnitude earthquake near the Mediterranean coastal city of Al Hoceima left more than 600 dead.

Friday’s quake was felt as far away as Portugal and Algeria, according to the Portuguese Institute for Sea and Atmosphere and Algeria’s Civil Defense agency, which oversees emergency response.
___

[avid]

Thankfully, my cousin exited last week, but horrific circumstances

[Gwin Ru]

...

... allegedly from Morocco's earthquake:

1700701025433203035

[Tam]

This is actually a known (but unexplained) phenomenon with large earthquakes, called Earthquake Lights. They have been observed/recorded for centuries. The exact cause and nature of these lights is up for debate in academic and scientific circles.

Of course, this particular footage, if authentic, could easily be something entirely different. The beams look like alleged videos of DEWs that have been appearing online lately.

As with all things you see or read on the internet, the footage should be taken with a grain of salt.

The death toll is now at 2,900 and counting.

Hopefully we don’t see any other major disasters (“natural” or otherwise) for the remainder of 2023. It’s been a rough year.

[Agape]

...

... allegedly from Morocco's earthquake:

1700701025433203035

So strange , I see with my naked eyes the lightening starts from triangular or multi-angle object rotating in space spiralling off ,
kind of perfect for “UFO” .
Wonder if anyone else can see the same or eyes are fooling me :(


It’s claimed to be CG :)

https://www.boomlive.in/amp/fact-check/morocco-earthquake-lightning-cgi-video-fact-check-23034

[Agape]

But many lightenings and blue light orbs lit the midnight skies of Marrakesh and were filmed before the earthquake :

https://www.wionews.com/science/science-explains-why-moroccos-sky-was-mysteriously-lit-up-minutes-before-earthquake-635262/amp

[Tam]

I definitely see the triangular formation, Agape. Maybe even an object in the center, but it’s hard to tell and I’m currently on mobile.

A quote from your article may be an explanation for the lights.



“During an earthquake, seismic and tectonic forces deform rocks and minerals in the Earth's crust, enabling the flow of electric currents.

These accumulated electric charges on the Earth's surface eventually lead to electric discharges, wherein positively charged electrons in the rocks attract negatively charged particles in the uppermost atmosphere of Earth, resulting in overhead light displays.”



Another article from Business Insider is predictably reductive in their take (and “debunks” the above theory), but did share one interesting detail:

“ "People have wondered about them forever," Karen Daniels, a physicist at North Carolina State University, told The New York Times. "It's one of those persistent mysteries that hang around and never quite get nailed. […] For instance, mysterious bright flashes were caught on camera before the 2021 earthquake in Mexico City, PBS reported. They also appeared over eastern Japan before a 2022 earthquake”



So somewhere out there, video evidence allegedly exists of EQLs from 2 other recent quakes.

I’ll see if I can track them down later this evening when I have time, so we can cross-reference.

[Agape]

There are huge floods in Libya at the moment, see main news, with land coast areas subsiding, sliding to the sea , the sight and size of which is terrifying and more than 10 000 people are missing and unknown amount of people has perished.

It would be terrifying but not impossible to see tectonic rift opening along and through the continent along sinking dunes of Sahara desert

that would results is seismological events in the Mediterranean

but [please take me with reserves].

We had strange electric storm on the same night. Quite scary.


🙏