Secondary One
History-Geography Integrated Assignment
Geography component
Term 1
2010
News Blog

On February 3 2008, a powerful earthquake of magnitude 5.9 occured near Lake Kivu, Great Lakes, Africa. The Epicentre of the Earthquake was 20km north of Bukavu at in the Democratic Republic of Congo.



This earthquake left at least 25 people dead in Rwanda and up to 200 seriously injured. Ten were killed in Rusizi while in the DR of Congo, 5 were confirmed dead and another 149 seriously injured. The earthquake also caused an electricity cut in Burundi and further in Nairobi. Altogether, there are at least 39 dead and about 349 people injured.

The National Police and the RDF military personnel were the first to rescue the victims, before the team of disaster experts from the Prime Minister’s office, Ministry of Defence and the Local Government dispatched from Kigali to assist the victims next.

The earthquake, plus several others around the same area, occured in the Western Rift in the East African rift system. This system is a 3000km diffuse, a zone where the stretching of the crust or lithospere is concernted. This zone passes through East Africa from north to south, and is the boundary betweent the African plate and the Somalia plate. These two plates are converging at about 4mm per year. Lake Kivu was created by transform fault and all the earthquakes that occured near here, the largest of which in the rift system since the 1990s, had a magnitude of 7.6, were caused by
both the normal faulting and the strike-slip faulting. Strike-slip faulting is usually almost vertical and the footwall moves sideways or laterally with little vertical motion.






http://www.mod.gov.rw/?DISASTER-RESPONSE
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strike-slip_faulting#Strike-slip_faults
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Rwanda_earthquake
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Rwanda_earthquake


Done by : Qiu Jiahui (21)
Class : 1 Faith