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Triple earth tremor shakes Accra

For those in Accra, the first tremor occurred at exactly 10.48pm, followed by the second one eight minutes later and a third

Residents in various parts of the capital, including Gbawe, Mallam, McCarthy Hill, Dansoman, Kasoa, Sowutuom and Lapaz Nii Boi have shared chilling experiences of how the tremor got them scared and made them uncomfortable to sleep.

Eunice Hilda Ampomah, a resident of Lapaz Nii Boi, said she was in bed when she heard a loud, shaky noise on her roof which rattled from one end to another.

ā€œInstantly the house began to shake, including my bed. I got really scared, even afraid to try to sleep.

ā€œIt happened the second time and even louder, the third and fourth were mild,ā€ she said.

Miss Ampomah said she had been sensitised to come out whenever there is an earthquake but was scared to step out of her room.

ā€œI am scared to even sleep as I don’t know when I will need to run out,ā€ she said.

Audrey Dekalu, a resident at Metaheko, said: ā€œI was about dozing off when I felt the first tremor. It was quite a scary feeling. And then the second and third followed.ā€

Shaken

Ken Sackey, a resident in Tema, said he was lying in bed reading when he felt ā€œthe building shudder … I thought it was the undersea blasting works being undertaken at the Tema Port Expansion Project but realised moments later when I felt my bed shake and the building shaking that some seismic activity of some sort had occurred.

ā€œThe second one was strong. I woke up and rallied my family downstairs to wait a while on the lawn … Just in case of any eventuality,ā€ he said.

Beatrice Asamani-Savage a resident at North Atomic Area, said her son hurried down the stairs, calling out her name in the process.

ā€œā€˜Mummy, did you feel it?ā€™ he asked. ā€˜The bed shook!ā€™ I was sitting in the living room downstairs, with his grandma.

ā€œThough I had also heard the sound, with a slight movement under my feet, I thought it was a tipper truck emptying its content in the distant neighbourhood. But his experience brought my attention to it.

ā€œA tremor. And then it happened again and again. Everything about keeping safe in an earthquake flooded my thoughts. I reached for my phone to share my experience. Alas, it was not just in my North Atomic area, but from McCarthy Hill to Sakumono, the earth had moved in its own way, and my colleagues were not taking it for granted,ā€ she said.

Christabel Addo said she arrived home from work and entered her kitchen, and suddenly, she felt the ground shaking under her feet.

ā€œI heard a sound like someone was dragging something heavy on the ground.

ā€œI asked my girls what that sound was, but we all thought it was one of the tipper trucks that ply our roads during the day.

ā€œI just saw on our estate platform that it was an earth tremor,ā€ she said.

The earth tremor seems to have travelled far and wide, with some residents in the Central and Eastern Regions reporting to have experienced it.

Confirmation

The tremors were made up of a fore shock, which struck at 10.48pm and measured 3.7 on the richter scale, then the main shock, which occurred at 10.54pm and measured 4.2 on the Richter scale.

This was followed by the aftershock at 10.57pm, which measured 3.5 on the Richter scale.

A senior seismologist at the Ghana Geological Survey Authority, Nicholas Opoku, said the source of the tremors was strongly believed to be the coast of the Dansoman Beach, and estimated to be between 200 and 500 metres into the sea.

He said Accra was an earthquake-prone zone with active fault lines.

Opoku said since 2018, whenever minor earthquakes have occurred closely after each other it signals that a major quake is ahead.

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