Botswana 6.5-magnitude quake shakes at least 8 African countries

The strong earthquake that hit Botswana on Monday night registered at a 6.5 magnitude on the Richter scale, according to the United States Geological Survey (USGS).
The quake struck shortly before 8 p.m. near Moijabana in the rural east-central Ghanzi region of the country.
“So far we do not have any confirmed reports of serious injury but are awaiting further updates,” Botswana officials said Tuesday morning. They added that the earthquake occurred in an area of low historic seismic activity, and was believed to be the largest earthquake ever recorded in Botswana.
The European Mediterranean Seismological Centre (EMSC) also measured the Botswana earthquake at a 6.5-magnitude.
The earthquake was widely felt across Botswana and South Africa, as well as in Lesotho, Mozambique, Namibia, Swaziland, Zambia and Zimbabwe, according to people who experienced the slow shaking of the shallow quake and logged their account with the USGS.
They included residents of Gaborone, Johannesburg and Pretoria, but also Maputo and Harare.
One Gabarone resident described a loud rumble that got louder and then ebbed away. “Something fell over in the garage, but otherwise no apparent damage,” they wrote on the EMSC testimonies log. “Very scary and everyone in the house panicked.”
Lights, doors and tables were shaking in Zimbabwe, while a Zambian resident described the experience there as scary too. People also reported aftershocks in the region.
Two buildings in Johannesburg were evacuated as a precaution, News 24 reported.
The USGS said that the earthquake was similar to those that occur in the East African rift system, a seismic zone that passes through eastern Africa from Djibouti and Eritrea on the north to Malawi and Mozambique on the south.
This was the second earthquake to hit southern Africa in less than 24 hours. An earlier 5.2-magnitude earthquake hit South Africa with an epicenter near Stilfontein, about 150 kilometers west of Johannesburg

https://africatimes.com/2017/04/04/botswana-6-5-magnitude-quake-shakes-at-least-8-african-countries/