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João Guterres remembers that February night perfectly. He was five years old when the earth began to shake. “I was in the room and my father, who was also an engineer, took my mother and my brother and we all went out to the street.” They lived on Avenida 5 de Outubro, in Lisbon. Now, more than 50 years later, João works as a civil engineer, like his father, and says he has no doubts: if an earthquake like the one in 1969 were repeated, with a magnitude of 7.9 on the Richter scale, it would be one of the most affected areas in the capital, due to the type of construction.
The numbers that come from Moroccowhere a 6.9 magnitude earthquake was felt on Friday night, are impressive: more than 1,300 dead, almost two thousand injured and 30 aftershocks. Figures that contrast with the 13 deaths that were recorded in Portugal in 1969, although the magnitude was smaller. “And we must remember that, for each degree on the Richter scale, the energy released is 33 times greater,” recalls engineer João Guterres.
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Source: Observadora
