Also after dinner time, after a leap February 29, 1960, Morocco was shaking like it did on September 8, 2023. Not as strong, but with worse consequences (for now). He last earthquake that affected the North African country had an initial magnitude of 7, later corrected to 6.8 on the Richter scale. Although there have been different earthquakes in recent years, 63 years ago another earthquake put Morocco in check: near the tourist city of Agadir, on the shores of the Atlantic Ocean, an earthquake of moderate power (5.8) but of shallow depth, about 15 kilometers, was recorded. It was precisely this that made the extreme tremor perceptionaccording to the Mercalli intensity scale.

Seismographs from around the world recorded the Moroccan earthquake of 1960, although no station was close enough to precisely locate its epicenter. With the information available, the epicenter of the earthquake was determined to be a few kilometers from the Kasbah neighborhood. A week before the big earthquake, Morocco was already shaking: a sequence of small earthquakesfrom weak to mild, over several days and on February 29, all the alerts were activated at noon, when an earthquake of strong intensity took place but without major consequences.

The great Agadir earthquake of 1960, which occurred on the third day of Ramadan, lasted just 10 seconds, but caused many hotels, buildings will collapse, apartments, markets and office buildings. The Kasbah fortress, built in the 16th century on a hill in Agadir, shattered, leaving only part of its wall standing. The figure of deaths range between 12,000 and 15,000among them many tourists who were trapped under the rubble.

Why did so many people die in the 1960 earthquake?

Urban planning policies (or lack thereof) had a large part of the responsibility in the consequences of the Agadir earthquake of 1960. Between 1945 and 1955, Agadir was the scene of rapid construction, but without many prior evaluations: the buildings were erected by workers without knowledge, in a hurry, and since the city had not experienced any serious earthquakes until then, It was built without taking into account seismic activity. Most of the buildings had been built without respecting the regulations for this purpose.

Although some tall reinforced concrete buildings withstood the tremors, most of the masonry buildings ended up demolished. The same thing happened with buildings. built with rammed earth, something that happened in many neighborhoods of the city. These types of structures have no resistance to earthquakes – this has also happened in the 2023 earthquake – and remain completely disintegrated, turning into dust. In these areas, in addition, the rescue problems, given the impossibility of accessing and moving the debris. In the neighborhood of Talborjt (which means ‘small fort’) just 10 of its nearly 5,000 inhabitants survived.

Among the buildings that were completely collapsed were, as the BBC was able to confirm at the time, the Agadir hospital, the newly built luxury hotel Saada or the headquarters of the National Militia.