Sunday marks the 50th anniversary of SA's biggest earthquake

Sunday marks the 50th anniversary of the biggest earthquake to ever hit SA.

The quake, which measured 6.3 on the Richter scale, occurred in the Tulbagh area in the Western Cape on September 29 1969.

It struck at 10pm and caused significant damage to the town, destroying buildings in the main road and leading to a reported nine fatalities, mostly young children.

“While there is always some seismic risk, we don’t believe there is a real threat for a mega earthquake of 7 or more on the Richter scale in the Western Cape,” said Western Cape minister of local government, environmental affairs and development planning Anton Bredell in a statement ahead of the anniversary.

“While we can never rule it out completely, the science doesn’t support it. It also bears noting that a 7 on the Richter scale is considered to be 33 times stronger than a 6.”

Bredell says the Koeberg nuclear plant, which would be most at risk to major seismic activity, was built to withstand a lot of seismic activity including being built on shock-absorbers.

“Furthermore, the Western Cape government, over the 10 years, has developed an excellent disaster-response system to save people from trapped buildings in a disaster situation should the need arise.

“At the moment we have two caches of highly specialised rescue equipment including high pressure airbags that can lift up to 120 tons at a time. We also have highly trained dogs that are trained to find people who may be trapped during a disaster.”

Colin Deiner, head of the Western Cape Disaster Management Centre, said that the province had 160 highly trained urban search-and-rescue technicians on call at short notice in the event of a major disaster.

“With regards to our caches of equipment, the two systems are always in a high state of readiness. One system is kept in Cape Town, the other is kept in Breede Valley, on the other side of the Huguenot tunnel. This is further pro-active planning to ensure we don’t get cut off in the event of a major incident.”

Bredell said provincial disaster teams were often called to assist with global crises.

“Members of our teams have responded to nine major earthquakes across the world since 1999 including Haiti in 2010 and Japan in 2011. These experiences further enable their skill levels and experience. In addition there are numerous training exercises every year to ensure a permanent state of readiness.”