Israel has been hit by multiple small earthquakes over the past month. Israel lies on the Syrian-African active fault line that runs along the Red Sea, the Dead Sea and the Jordan Valley, causing geological activity in the area. While most of the tremors in Israel rank low on the Richter Scale, one should always remain prepared as earthquakes cannot be predicted in advance.
The Home Front Command announced that to prepare the people of any unforeseen disaster, an earthquake drill will be scheduled on Monday morning in a number of towns and cities throughout the country.
The drill included several towns in the Jordan Valley, the cities of Kiryat Shmona, Beit She’an, Acre and Nesher in north Israel, and Arad and Dimona in southern Israel. Sirens which were till now activated by the missile defence systems, will now also get activated if the nationwide network of 120 seismic monitoring stations detects a strong earthquake.
Sirens were sounded across several cities, although this time not to warn citizens of any incoming rockets, but to alert them of a possible earthquake, as a part of the drill for now. The sirens will act in providing real-time warnings in case of an earthquake.
Residents were initially asked to install the ‘Home Front Command’ app on their phones, later on, the IDF announced that due to some technical issue, the alert will not be sent out on the app.
The large drill comes after several earthquakes have been felt in Israel over the past month. On January 11, a large 6.5-magnitude earthquake hit off the west coast of Cyprus. The tremors of the earthquake were felt in Israel, Lebanon and Turkey. Less than two weeks later, two more small earthquakes shook northern Israel within hours, which led to the evacuation of a school in Afula and the City Hall of Beit She’an.
Just last week, another earthquake struck off the coast of Cyprus which was felt all the way in Israel. The Cypriot Geological Survey Department said the earthquake was an aftershock of the large quake that occurred off the east Mediterranean island on January 11.
There were no reports of injuries or serious damage in either of the cases, but the unusual amount of recent tremors felt in parts of the country has led some residents to believe a larger quake was on its way.
In 2018, the state regulator had warned that Israel is grievously unprepared for a major earthquake. Not much has changed four years later. Some blame that for two years the country remained paralyzed due to the lack of political stability and also because of the absence of a state budget for three years. The state budget has now been passed.
Recently, the geological experts warned that around one million homes in Israel are at the risk of collapse in case an earthquake hit. According to some estimates, a major earthquake in Israel could cause around 7,000 deaths and over 145,000 injuries, with 170,000 people left homeless and 320,000 buildings damaged.
In 2005, the Israeli government had approved the TAMA 38 plan which was an initiative aimed at encouraging the people to strengthen the old structures of their buildings. However, it takes at least three years for a building to get approved for TAMA 38 plan, whereas the waiting period rises to almost five years in densely populated parts of the country, the Tel Aviv metropolitan area for example.
According to Kan, the public broadcaster, a mere 27,000 buildings have been reinforced under the TAMA 38 plan since its inception in 2005.
The last major earthquake to hit Israel was in 1927 when a 6.2-magnitude tremor killed 500 people and injured 700. The seismologists estimate that approximately every 100 years such big earthquakes occur in this region.
