Two new earthquakes struck Ethiopia on Friday – one with a magnitude of 4.6, 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.
These are the tenth and eleventh in five weeks.
The first earthquake was on September 27 with a magnitude of 4.5, then a group of earthquakes between 4.5 and five Richter degrees, at a depth of 10 km, all in the Great Rift Valley area, which is about 570 km from the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam.
Professor of Geology and Water Resources at the Cairo University Abbas Sharaky warned that seismic activity has seen an unprecedented increase in Ethiopia over the past three years.
Sharaky noted that the average was about six earthquakes per year, but the number of earthquakes in 2022 reached 12, and in 2023 increased to 38, and so far 28 earthquakes hit Ethiopia and its surroundings during 2024.
He explained that the occurrence of earthquakes with a magnitude of five degrees and far away from GERD currently does not have a significant impact.
However he warned that something stronger than that may occur in the vicinity of GERD, as on May 8, 2023, an earthquake occurred that was the closest to the dam at 100 km away, with a magnitude of 4.4 degrees.
“The GERD currently holds 60 billion cubic meters, which is a huge amount weighing 60 billion tons, and thus the region is entering the danger phase of the specter of collapse, not from the current earthquakes, but if they increase and approach the dam, and we recall that the original American design for the GERD was to store only 11.1 billion cubic meters.”
