A third earthquake struck Ethiopia on Sunday with a magnitude of 4.7 on a depth of 10 km, about 570 km from the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) and approximately 400 km from the eastern border of the lake.
A professor of geology and water resources at Cairo University, Abbas Sharaqi, revealed that the latest earthquake is the 16th in the past five weeks and the 31st this year so far in Ethiopia and its surroundings with a magnitude of 4-5 degrees.
The number of earthquakes in 2023 recorded 38, the strongest of which was 5.6 degrees.
The average number of earthquakes greater than four degrees from 2014-2020 is 5.3, while the number of earthquakes less than four is in the hundreds.
Sharaqi confirmed to Al-Masry Al-Youm that the seismic activity has exceeded expectations, especially in the last five weeks, and there must be close monitoring of the GERD and the lake – whose total length exceeds 200 km.
He explained that an earthquake with a magnitude of five degrees and a distant location from the GERD currently has no impact at the present time, but something stronger could happen and be closer to the GERD, as it currently contains 60 billion cubic meters.
The geology professor pointed out that the the original US plan for the GERD was to store only 11.1 billion cubic meters, but the Ethiopian government greatly exaggerated the specifications of the GERD until it ballooned to a storage capacity of 60 billion cubic meters.
Thus the region enters a dangerous threat of collapse, not from the current earthquakes but if they increase and get closer to the dam.
Earthquake after earthquake
Two new earthquakes struck Ethiopia with a magnitude of 4.6 degrees on Saturday, at a depth of 12.2 km at 8:55 PM, and another with the same magnitude at a depth of 10 km at 11:13 PM Cairo time, making them the tenth and eleventh in five weeks.
The first earthquake occurred on September 27 with a magnitude of 4.5 degrees, followed by a group of earthquakes between 4.5 and five degrees, and at a depth of 10km, all in the Ethiopian Rift Valley, which is about 570 km away from the GERD.
Edited translation from Al-Masry Al-Youm
