1960 Agadir earthquake

The Atlas Mountains are an intracontinental mountain belt extending from Morocco to Tunisia. These mountains formed during the Cenozoic by continental collision. The mountain range reaches its highest elevation to the west, in Morocco. The High Atlas formed during the reactivation of an ancient rift from the Triassic. However rather than extensional forces, the reactivation compressed the rift feature due to the collisional feature in the north. Seismicity in Morocco is concentrated in the country's north and the Alboran Sea region. South of the Rif, seismic activity is sparse but distributed across the Middle Atlas, High Atlas, and Anti-Atlas. Seismicity in the Saharan Atlas is limited, and absent in the Saharan region south of the belt; it is also less active eastwards in Algeria and Tunisia. Earthquakes in the Atlas Mountains display focal mechanisms of strike-slip, thrust or a combination of both (oblique-slip). The 2023 Al Haouz earthquake was the largest in the Atlas Mountains, striking northeast of Agadir. Measuring 6.9, it ruptured a blind thrust fault. The sparsely populated location of the earthquake limited the death toll to just under 3,000. == Earthquake ==

While the shock was recorded by seismographs around the world, few of these stations were close enough to the scene to locate the epicenter with high accuracy, but with what information was available the instrumental location was determined to have been to the north-northwest of the Kasbah. Macroseismic observations (establishing the locations with the highest observed intensity) placed the epicenter about north of Yachech. A sequence of minor foreshocks preceded the main event. The first shock occurred on 23 February with an intensity of III or IV (Weak to Light) and on the day of the disaster, a more significant foreshock with an intensity of VI (Strong) caused alarm around the lunchtime hour. The main shock took place on the third day of the Muslim observance of Ramadan, immediately collapsing many hotels, apartments, markets, and office buildings. Underground water mains broke and sewer systems crumbled. The Kasbah of Agadir Oufla, a dilapidated fortress which had stood for centuries, crumbled on the side of a hill. With no water pressure and most fire stations having collapsed (killing their occupants) many fires were left burning in the resort city of Agadir with few firefighters and resources to fight them. With nearly seventy percent of the city in ruins, no rescue operations were able to be initiated or arranged from within Agadir. By morning the French army and sailors from the United States Sixth Fleet approached the coast, anchored, and prepared for the rescue process. Upon arrival, Rear Admiral Frank Akers (commander of the U.S. fleet air arm in the eastern Atlantic and Mediterranean) toured the scene and reported that the Agadir hospital was in ruins. One of the many victims of the disaster was author and lawyer Robin Maugham. He was treated at a hospital in Casablanca for minor injuries he received while at the Saada resort when it collapsed – he had been trapped under a fallen beam for several hours. Many quarters of the city consisted entirely of buildings constructed from rammed earth. These had essentially zero earthquake resistance and disintegrated completely into dust. In these areas rescue work was impossible and survival rates were negligible; for example, in the Talbourdjt area, out of 5,000 inhabitants fewer than ten survived. == Tsunami ==

The newspaper report on 2 March 1960 described how a tsunami was reported to have come ashore shortly after the earthquake, stating "A tidal wave curled in across the white beaches and lanced 300 metres/yards into the town. The city dock was cut in two, a Spanish shipmaster radioed." A tsunami disaster was later refuted by a report from the American Iron and Steel Institute after a team of earthquake engineers, including Ray W. Clough from the University of California, Berkeley, surveyed the damage and building failures throughout the Agadir area in March 1960. The report of their findings stated that the port facilities suffered damage due to fairly uniform subsidence in the harbor area that was responsible for knocking over five large cranes, but no evidence of nor any reliable witness to large waves was found, with the exception of a Dutch freighter crew who stated that large swells in the harbor did cause the separation of their mooring lines at the time of the earthquake. A report in a 1964 issue of the Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America also denied the existence of a destructive tsunami because of a lack of evidence from a nearby tide gauge. ==See also==