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By Sam Player 
12h ago
After Cape Town was rocked by earthquakes last weekend, a geophysicist warned it could happen again.
Professor Andrzej Kijko, director of the Center for Natural Hazards at the University of Pretoria, said that if Cape Town were hit by a major seismic event, there would be significant damage to the city’s infrastructure and property.
Last weekend, a magnitude 6.2 earthquake was detected approximately 1,600 km offshore in Cape Town, which was then followed by tremors of magnitude 2.5 and 2.9 that were felt even in the suburbs of Cape Town. north.
“It is doubtful that the epicenter of the earthquake is exactly the same as the one experienced previously, but the rule of seismologists is very clear: if it happens, it will happen again,” Kijko said.
“We don’t know exactly when, but we do know the area. The easiest item for us to determine is where it will be. If we had a 6.3 magnitude earthquake in Cape Town, there would be serious damage. “
Kijko added that 90% of the seismic activity in South Africa was caused by mining.
In 2014, Kijko co-authored a paper titled “A Scenario Approach to Estimating the Maximum Predictable Loss of Buildings Due to an Earthquake in Cape Town,” which he estimated that if the city were hit by a magnitude 6.96 earthquake, considered the “worst case scenario”, there would be severe destruction of property.
The paper calculates this using two previous large earthquakes, a 6.3 magnitude earthquake in the Milnerton area in 1809 whose epicenter is estimated to be the site of the old Ascot racecourse, and the 6.3 magnitude earthquake at Tulbagh and Ceres. which claimed 12 lives in 1969.
In another estimate, damage from a 6.3 magnitude earthquake could result in damage to structures within a 50km radius of the epicenter, costing the insurance industry up to R10 billion.
According to insurance expert Christelle Colman, while South African insurance providers were aware of the risk of earthquakes hitting the city, there were other factors to consider.
“If you have insurance with a South African insurance company, there is a 100% chance that you are covered for damage.
“The big issue for us, and what we’re looking at, is urban sprawl in the Milnerton, Parklands area, where they expect an epicenter to be.
“It’s one thing to talk about being insured, but the majority of the people who will be affected are the uninsured,” Colman said.
He added that the insurance industry could survive the billions of rand aftermath that Kijko envisioned.
“Every insurance company in South Africa has its own model and they determine their exposure according to the amount of risk in a specific area, and then they would take those measurements to the reinsurance market.
The reinsurance companies then reinsured the insurance company exposure on a catastrophic basis. “
On Monday, the city of Cape Town declared that in the event of an earthquake, the Geosciences Council and the South African Meteorological Service would be the lead agencies.
“The city’s disaster coordination team will coordinate responses to potential impacts, involving both internal and external agencies, including SAPS, SANDF, EMS Urban Search and Rescue, SPCA, etc.,” said the committee member of the security and protection mayor JP Herrero.
James-Brent Styan, spokesman for Local Government, Environmental Affairs and Development Planning MEC Anton Bredell, said: “We believe our systems are in place in the event of a disaster.
“We have more than 160 highly trained people that we can deploy should a situation arise.
“For the past 10 years, we have sent teams to help places affected by earthquakes like Haiti and Japan.”
Argus weekend
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