Morocco earthquake kills more than 1,000 | Hacker News Reader

Morocco earthquake kills more than 1,000

nbcnews.com

235 pointsgeox141 comments

I felt it, it was terrible experience, it was so strong that it was felt across wide regions. Luckily the epicenter was a bit far from major cities. At first i did not realize why my chair was shaking as i was using headphones, then for at least 10sec i couldn’t even stand. We spent the night outside

I remember the first earthquake I experienced. Same feeling: everything around me started shaking; for several seconds, I couldn't figure out what was happening; and then it suddenly hit me: it's an earthquake.

(I'm from a country where earthquakes do not occur. For some reason, I always thought that earthquakes were accompanied by, well, movie-style earthquake sounds. It was kinda eye-opening to realize that earthquakes are silent...)

Depends on the type of earthquake, the composition of the ground near you, etc.

Where I live now, weak earthquakes can sometimes almost only be heard, along with a brief shake you'd easily mistake for someone slamming a door.

Earthquakes are not silent. I'm not sure where you experienced yours but earthquakes are deafeningly loud. Movie-style earthquake sounds don't even do it justice.

I was in an apartment building in Santiago, Chile—in fact, pretty much all of the earthquakes I experienced were in Santiago. Never heard any (out of the normal) sounds. Is that because the buildings were built to handle earthquakes?

not universally true.

the experience isn't the same across the board.

I was in a heavily affected part of LA during the Northridge quakes. It did 50b in damage, killed people, injured thousands. The most significant noise I remember was the cacophony of car alarms and people screaming.

Our house didn't collapse. If it had, i'd probably remember that noise.

Memory is faulty, so who knows. Maybe it was loud, but that's not what I remember, so I can understand why the descriptions vary so broadly.

No good footage of the Northridge event is really very available, but there is plenty of detailed (and unfortunately graphic) footage of the 2015 Nepal event, the 'sounds of chaos' far and wide out-match the sound of the low rumbling quake -- but that could be a deception of the microphones; I would imagine most of them lack the range to properly capture the low roar of an earthquake.

Northridge was also really early in the morning (4:30 am), so it's possible you were sleeping during the actual earthquake.

I heard a very small one somewhere that really isn't meant to get them, through a TV show in earbuds. Perhaps the volume has something to do with what's happening beneath the surface vs magnitude? In our case, as far as I know, the epicentre was a ~5h drive away (and out at sea), but it sounded about the same as loud subs at a concert to me.

I was in an earthquake in the balkans last year. Didnt hear a thing. Everything vibrated and some stuff fell down though. But it was still quite far from the epicenter (perhaps that is where you hear it).

They're not silent but they're also not "deafeningly loud". Where do you people pull this nonsense from.

Experience. Not nonsense.

Silent? I think they are the exact opposite. I experienced a very very minor earthquake in New England and it sounded like a truck roaring down the road

I've been in two significant earthquakes. I don't recall hearing anything either time.

I think it probably depends on a lot of factors?

I was in the earthquake in the balkans last year and didnt hear anything. And while I wasnt in the center everything in the apartment was shaking and some stuff fell down.

I think they can vibrate at different frequencies, and so some can be at frequencies lower than we can hear

Personally I've gone through a number of small quakes in different countries and don't remember any sound at all.

There was an earthquake in Melbourne, Australia earlier this year and a common theme (myself included) was thinking a car had rammed into the house.

I was 150 or so kms away from the Turkey earthquake this year which martyred 50,000+. It was big. We shaked in the 2nd floor of our house. Some people in the same room heard a very loud noise it while others didn’t. I didn’t. I guess it’s just below the average audible frequency range.

Earthquakes are by no means silent. Earthquakes are accompanied by a deep rumble. I have experienced many earthquakes unfortunately, including a deadly 7.1 magnitude quake and its many aftershocks.

The 5 earthquakes I can remember experiencing all took place when I was indoors and all I can really remember for sound is the building creaking. Followed by a bunch of "did you feel that?"

I have never experienced an earthquake directly, but I once visited life safety learning center at Ikebukuro Fire Station in Tokyo and had the opportunity to experience the Great East Japan Earthquake of 2011 on a simulator there. Even if you are prepared for it, it is terrible. It's hard to imagine how people living ordinary lives feel when something like this starts.

In Japan, mostly wondering if this will be the big one? After a decade of minor earthquakes they’re mostly annoying.

It has given me a lot of faith in the construction of my house though.

The amazing ordinariness of the disaster. I wonder if the residents of settlements around the Gulf of Naples also normalized the smoke over Vesuvius after Pompeii and Herculaneum were destroyed? „Is it the big one?“

There's nothing ordinary about any disasters or upcoming disasters especially earthquakes . The early signs are there but we need to look into them very carefully and not taking anything for granted. The largest and most lethal Tokyo earthquake happened exactly 100 years ago reportedly killing more than 10K residents, namely the Great Kantō earthquake back in 1923 [1]. Imagine if similar disaster now with the huge number of current Tokyo population. That's probably the reason the Tokyo residents are paranoid now, and righly so.

At the moment we have good results for predicting earthquakes (not forecasting) that should be able to warn the residents a few days before the impending major earthquake. The results are consistent based on offline data of the recent Turkeys, New Zealand, Indonesia and Philippines earthquakes. Hopefully we can reliably repeat the early detection capability with the real-time data, if fundings are available. If anyone know how to approach Japan government (or Turkish, NZ, etc) for funding the system please let me know in the comments.

[1] 1923 Great Kantō earthquake:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1923_Great_Kant%C5%8D_earthqua...

I’m not saying disasters are ordinary in general. If you are living with a continuous expectation of something terrible to happen, if this expectation becomes a part of your ordinary life, that is the feeling I’m talking about.

Deepest condolences to one of nicest people on earth. I had to been to Morocco on a vacation and the warmth and welcomeness was highlight of the trip. On top of that, people of Morocco love kids and accommodate a lot.

I have a stellar contract SDE from Morocco. Aside from the humanitarian tragedy of this earthquake, my eyes have been opened to the challenges young professionals with Visas face in the US. They tend to be ripe for exploitation by hiring firms and contract agencies.

Having been to some rural regions of the Atlas mountains not so long ago, many of the buildings are built onto precipices and do not look ready to withstand an earthquake.

Yes, they dont get earhtquakes often, so nothing is prepared. Worst are multistory buildings not up to any quake-resistant standards.

Did mt Toubkal hike (highest Atlas mountain) few years ago, pretty places, very sad to read all this.

Same. Loved Toubkal, loved the people, loved Marrakech. So sad to see this.

I spend a lot of time in Morocco. I always wondered what an earthquake might do because they quite often build with simple cinderblock. The government actually sort of encourages it because official land ownership is not the norm and sometimes the government will raze buildings that were built without proper permits. Of course people couldn't really afford earthquake proof houses anyways. Sad situation all around. Was planning to go this winter, but I don't want to be a tourist in the midst of calamity.

Just putting out there that it might still be a good time to go:

I can’t speak to Morocco, but a number of SE Asian places derive significant incomes from tourism — and losing that after natural disasters compounds the problem.

There’s a possibility that visiting Morocco is bringing needed money into their community (as long as you’re not going to areas short on supplies). You need money to rebuild.

And tourism is ~7% of Morocco’s GDP (as of a few years ago).

https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/sites/e3197856-en/index.html?i...

> Was planning to go this winter, but I don't want to be a tourist in the midst of calamity.

I'm very conflicted on this one, it seems like this is the intuition I (along with a lot of people) want to reach for but is that actually the most helpful thing?

No, life goes on and it's not a calamity. It's pretty bad, but we'll have another crisis if tourism goes down because of the bad publicity of the earthquake.

For many Moroccans, welcoming tourists is their livelihoods. The best thing you can do to support them is to keep your plans in place.

In 1960 an earthquake in Agadir claimed almost half of the city's population. That gives you an idea about how badly prepared they were.

City has been rebuild (except from the hill were you can see the memorial words at night) supposedly under earthquake sagety norms but that isn't the case of the rest of the country.

Please come. Tourism is the main livelihood for many Moroccans, and the areas badly affected are mostly rural.

The best thing you can do to support us is to keep your plans :)

I was playing with my cat that night when she started acting weird. Shortly after, I started hearing cracking noise inside the walls. That's when it hit me. Went to my roommate's room and woke him up and got out. It wasn't as strong as I thought but strong enough to get everyone out to the main street. As we sat down waiting for potential aftershocks I heard someone saying people died way down south. I googled "earthquake morocco" and first estimations showed a town that not that far from taroudant region where grandma lives(mountainous rural area). I tried calling but to no avail as the cell network was congested. We went home after an hour and a half passing out from the exhaustion. Woke up the next morning and called her, she was okay but it was strong enough to render the whole village(douar) petrified and make the decision to sleep outside... I got into social media afterwards and was shocked to hear that 320 people died in Al houz region... it's more than 2300 people as of writing this. May they rest in peace and give the victims families patience to get through these difficult times.

This is a map of almost all of the villages(dawawir) that were most impacted by the earthquake: https://goo.gl/maps/xdfG5YnHC6Z2vEci6 (thanks to whoever made it)

If you'd like to donate, please do via official channels; Bank Al-Maghrib, our central bank, made a special fund for the management of the effects of the earthquake: https://www.bkam.ma/en/News/2023/Make-your-donations-to-the-...

Earthquakes in Africa is rather unusual - we get some but it is more due to underground mining activity than tectonics.

Looking it seems this were the Eurasian plate meets the African plate ???.

Are you sure? Africa is a big continent. There's a lot of seismic activity going on in the eastern part of it, there are volcanoes etc.

I think the Atlas range is still growing. That means plates coming together.

I lived in Morocco (and have visited Marrakesh), but that was in the late 1960s. I also lived in East Africa, where they still have some active vulcanism, but I think things are subsiding.

Morocco had a bad earthquake in Agadir, in 1960. A huge number of folks died. I think it was mostly poor people, who live in rather slapdash shanty towns.

Looks very sad.

According to the USGS search engine on that part of N. Africa, there've been no other quakes >= mag 6 in the region (nor for at least halfway down the AF coast) in 200 years. (The closest was in Portugal; Agadir was a 5.8.)(There were hundreds in the eastern Mediterranean.)

So it's been centuries. That can't have helped; many of those structures have been around -a long- time.

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