ALGIERS, 30 May 2003 — Traumatized Algerians fled the capital Algiers and other built-up areas yesterday as a fourth tremor in just over a week rocked the country. The normally bustling city felt like a ghost town as locals packed their bags after a quake measuring 5.8 on the Richter scale hit the Mediterranean coast before dawn. A quake in the same region killed more than 2,000 people last week. Yesterday’s quake, which was followed by two smaller tremors during the day, left some people injured and several buildings reduced to rubble, but there were no deaths.
“People are fleeing town. Algiers is empty, everyone’s joining their families elsewhere,” Kenza Djouhri, owner of an estate agency in Algiers, told Reuters. “My close friends are coming with me to my family’s house outside Algiers, which is safe. If we’re going to die, we do it together.”
Authorities said people should remain calm but not sleep in damaged buildings. “I urge people to stay calm. It’s an aftershock. More will come,” said Mohamed Hamadache, a researcher at Algeria’s Geophysical, Astronomical and Astrophysics Research Center.
The government is also likely to face increased criticism over the quake after it emerged that Algeria’s National and Economic Council had warned five weeks before the disaster that widespread breaches of building regulations would “multiply the intensity” of any natural catastrophe. The region surrounding the capital was jolted in the early hours of yesterday by a tremor registering 5.8 on the Richter scale. Authorities said several people had been injured, mainly in the panic provoked by the aftershock, which caused the collapse of two buildings already weakened by the May 21 quake.
Panicked residents once again fled their homes to spend the rest of the night in their cars or sleeping in the open air, defying reassurances of a seismologist hastily brought in to national radio studios to broadcast a call for calm. An Algiers official said one of the injured was a woman who jumped from her first-floor window in Boumerdes, east of Algiers, the town worst hit by last Wednesday’s quake, which registered 6.8 on the Richter scale. Tens of thousands are now sleeping outdoors in Algiers and the quake zone to its east.
