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As the parlenda would say, on Sunday “ask for a pipe”. But yesterday the feeling is that we are really weak and we can literally fall into a hole. If the hole is deep, then “the world is over.” That was what the inhabitants of several Bahian cities thought, after feeling a historic earthquake in the state, which shook houses, people and their faith.
In the Recôncavo region, doors, windows and beds rattled as people tried to understand what was happening. Some, calling their friends, others listening to evangelical hymns about the apocalypse on high. “The tectonic plates move, causing tidal waves and destruction …”, intoned the JBL of housewife Ana Celeste Santos, 51, from Santo Antônio de Jesus.
At 2:33 pm on Sunday, at least 50,000 people had already Googled “earthquake in Bahia.” At the same time, the Integrated Communication Center of the State Military Police, in Recôncavo, kept the event open with the identification “sinister”, that is, waiting for information on material damage in cities affected by one of the largest tremors ever felt in the state.
According to the United States Geological Survey, at 07:44:31, an earthquake measuring 4.6 on the Richter scale was recorded, 6 km south to southwest of Mutuípe and 10 km deep. “Our laboratory and the University of São Paulo (USP) recalculated the number and the result was very similar; it was a little lower: 4.2 ”, says Anderson Nascimento, coordinator of the Seismological Laboratory of the Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte (UFRN).
The USP Seismology Center registered a total of seven tremors in the Amargosa region as of Sunday night. The largest, with magnitude 4.2. Authorities did not report the victims of the earthquake. “The biggest problem is not knowing the magnitude, but the effect that people feel,” says the UFRN researcher. The tremor that was felt, especially in cities such as São Miguel das Matas, Varzedo, Castro Alves, Cruz das Almas, Valença and Camamu, led residents to search for open places and WhatsApp groups, in an attempt to understand what was happening. . There were reports of the earthquake also in Salvador and the Metropolitan region; in Feira de Santana, Euclides da Cunha and Itabuna, destinations between 100 and 400 km from Amargosa and Mutuípe.
In Feira de Santana, engineering student Valdivam Figueiredo, 26, was working on his notebook when he heard a noise coming from the kitchen. “The dishes fell and I thought it was my impression because around 3 in the morning there was no one talking yet,” he revealed.
Terrified
In the WhatsApp groups of Amargosa, a message from Mayor Júlio Pinheiro tried to reassure the population. “Our teams are attentive and available for any situation,” he said in the audio. Images taken by the town hall engineer at six residences and at the church in the Corta-Mão district showed vertical cracks in the masonry, but the situation was not considered serious.
In a hairdresser in Santo Antônio de Jesús, Adalberto Estrela, 67, retired, recalled a phrase that his mother, a native of Amargosa, sentenced: “One day Amargosa will be bitter.” But the omen was only in the air long enough for 47-year-old barber Nilton Vidigal to relax: “Your mother’s town has a bitter name, but if you say her name slowly, it becomes a good thing. Amar-gosa ”.
“The breakdown, the tremors moved everything (sic.)”, The comedian Pisit Mota, who was in Valença at the time of the earthquake, shouted in a video. Despite the laid-back tone, comments like Vidigal and Pisit were a point out of the curve. “He was on his feet and he was off balance. I had the impression that the earth was going to open up and the earth was going to swallow me up ”, terrified businesswoman Joselita Andrade, 56, from Santo Antônio de Jesus.
In São Miguel das Matas, images from the Silva Supermarket’s security cameras recorded scenes that went viral: products from the gondolas rattle and fall in at least two aisles. Residents of the countryside, in several cities, reported the tremor and a crash. When touching objects during the bruises, the housewife Cristiane Santos, 34, from Santo Antônio de Jesus, recounted the panic: “My hands began to tingle and it is as if they had started an excavator near me.”
In Fazenda Braga, in the rural area of Varzedo, 19-year-old Rafaela Santos said she felt four tremors: “One in the morning, the second around 7:30 am, which lasted from 5 to 10 seconds. During the second tremor, my mother shook and, in the third, she began to feel bad. In Laje, lawyer Rui Andrade, 59, confirmed the feeling: “A very loud noise. Thus, we never had it here in the field ”. In the evening, around 6:12 p.m., she said she heard two shocks similar to the earthquakes that occurred in the morning.
In the urban area of the affected cities, witnesses allude to a large truck passing by a train to describe what they felt. According to the USP Center for Seismology, between 2018 and 2019 there were nine tremors in the region. “There is a recent history of tremors in the cities of Amargosa, São Miguel das Matas, Varzedo and Mutuípe,” he reported.
The state government testified that the earthquake was the largest ever recorded in Bahia, both for the magnitude of 4.6, and in extension, about 400 km² in radius, which extends from Reco ^ ncav to Vitória da Conquista (southwest). Itabuna (south) and Itaberaba (in Chapada Diamantina). “The State Civil Defense contacted the municipalities and the civil defense coordinators of the affected municipalities, asking them to refer technicians and engineers to inspect the buildings at risk of collapse,” he reported.
In Salvador, Codesal registered complaints in the neighborhoods of Daniel Lisboa, Ondina, Itapuã, Caixa D’água, Canabrava, Ribeira, Barris, Nazaré, Trobogy, Perrnambués, Mata Escura, Cabula, Cabula VI, Dom Avelar, Engenho Velho da Federação, García, Brotas, Inbuí and Arenoso.
