A group of three citizens, not yet identified, armed with bladed weapons (machetes), overpowered the security guard at the INAMET seismic station in the province of Lunda-Norte and stole solar panels, in the early hours of yesterday. According to information confirmed by the director of the National Institute of Meteorology and Geophysics, João Afonso, the three miscreants surprised the station’s security guard, tied him up and vandalized the institution that guarantees seismic control.
The INAMET seismic station, in the municipality of Chitato, province of Lunda-Norte, also depended on these solar panels, which is why the director regrets what happened and asks the local authorities to be within reach of the criminals so that the stolen equipment, which ensure seismic monitoring of the country.
This station is part of a group of five, distributed across the provinces of Bengo, Cuanza-Sul, Lunda-Norte, Moxico and Huíla, within the scope of the Modernization Project of the National Institute of Meteorology and Geophysics (INAMET). The state-of-the-art sensors at these stations help transmit information on the movement of the Earth’s crust (tectonic plates) in real time to INAMET’s central server.
The equipment enables seismic monitoring, encouraging the preservation of life and support for different socioeconomic sectors, especially civil construction, according to INAMET.
Just to give you an idea, last year INAMET recorded a light class seismic shock, with a magnitude of approximately 3.1 MW (on the Ritcher scale) that occurred on the 14th of July, whose epicenter was the municipality of Gabela, province of Cuanza. -South. As it was a low-magnitude earthquake, no victims or material damage were identified in the region.
Thanks to this new technology, which has now been vandalized in the province of Luanda-Norte, an intense earthquake was also observed, with a magnitude of 6.7 MW (on the Ritcher scale) at a depth of 190 km, whose epicenter was located in Neuquen, Argentina. The event was registered by INAMET at 03:05 (local time) and, according to Argentine press reports, no victims or serious material damage were identified in the Neuquem region.