On Sunday February 3rd 2008, an earthquake hit Rwanda at about 1.37pm killing at least thirty nine people and injuring hundreds. The neighboring country Congo was also affected killing six people and two hundred and thirty injured. A church is said to have collapsed in Rwanda killing ten people. The earthquake was felt in Burundi, causing electricity cut as far as the Kenyan capital of Nairobi. The first earthquake registered 6.0 in magnitude according to the Richter scale. The second earthquake registered 5.0. The Richter magnitude (M) of an earthquake measures the amount of energy released. It is based on a tracing made by a seismograph, an instrument that records earthquake displacement caused by shaking.
Rwanda is a small landlocked country in the Great Lakes region of east central Africa bordered by Uganda, Burundi, Democratic Republic of the Congo and Tanzania. It has a population of about 9 million people with the most engaged in subsistence agriculture. It has been well known after the genocide in 1994. The Democratic republic of Congo is situated at the heart of the west central portion of sub-Saharan Africa. It is bounded by Angola, the republic of Congo, the Central African Republic, Sudan, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, Tanzania and Zambia.
The city of Bukavu in the Democratic Republic of Congo was hit and it is said that that about 1500 residential and public buildings including 15 schools were destroyed. The epicenter of the earthquake was 20 km east of the city of Bukavu at Lake Kivu in the democratic Republic of Congo. The point or area within the earth where the earthquake rupture starts is called the focus of the earthquake. The epicenter is the point on the earth’s surface directly above the focus. The Lake Kivu basin is among the most active region in this rift. Seismic studies and field observations show that since 1997 the Lake Kivu basin has become more active than usual. The city of Bukavu suffers from frequent landslides because the city is...