The earthquake is smaller in scale than, for example, the February earthquake in Turkey, Tiira estimates
Anna Näveri,
Pekka Pantsu
The earthquake that happened in Morocco the night before Saturday was noticed as far away as Finland, says the director of the Institute of Seismology at the University of Helsinki Timo Tiira.
– Yes, it was clearly visible throughout Finland’s station network. Earthquakes of this size are observed in Finland. Even with our data, you can locate this earthquake and calculate the magnitude.
The magnitude of the earthquake was 6.8. It is the strongest in Morocco in more than a hundred years.
So far, more than 1,300 deaths have been reported. Tiira estimates that the number of victims could still rise drastically.
– I would believe that this could rise to thousands, in any case possibly even ten thousand.
According to Tiira, the number of fatalities is affected by how deep the earthquake occurred.
– It didn’t happen very deeply. Secondly, the local construction stock always affects such things, how many victims there will be and the density of the population.
Still, compared to, for example, the big earthquake in Turkey in February, the earthquake in Morocco is significantly smaller in scale, according to Tiira.
There have been aftershocks in the area, but they have remained weaker than the actual earthquake. According to Tiira, there may be more aftershocks, and they will occur close to the original earthquake area.
The edge of the Eurasian and African plates runs along the southern coast of the Mediterranean near Morocco.
Tiira says that it is about 550 kilometers from the earthquake area to the edge of the continental plates.