September 8, 2023 Earthquake: Marrakech, Safi, Morocco

Ref #13456:

Tectonic Summary

The September 8, 2023, M 6.8 earthquake near Oukaïmedene, Morocco, occurred due to oblique-reverse faulting at shallow depth within the Moroccan High Atlas Mountain range, roughly 75 km southeast of Marrakech. Focal mechanism solutions for the event indicate rupture occurred on a steeply dipping oblique-reverse fault striking to the northwest or a shallow dipping oblique-reverse fault striking to the east. The High Atlas Mountains contain a variety of mapped strike-slip and thrust faults, trending to the east-west and northeast-southwest. This earthquake occurred within the Africa Plate, approximately 550 km south of the plate boundary between the Africa and Eurasia plates. At the location of this earthquake, the African plate moves approximately 3.6 mm/year WSW relative to the Eurasia plate.

While commonly plotted as points on maps, earthquakes of this size are more appropriately described as slip over a larger fault area. Reverse faulting events of the size of the September 8, 2023, Morocco earthquake are typically about 30 by 20 km (length x width).

Earthquakes of this size in the region are uncommon but not unexpected. Since 1900 there have been 9 M5 and larger earthquakes within 500 km of this event, none of which are over M6. Most of these events have occurred east of the September 8, 2023, earthquake.

Ref #13581, #13583, #13587, #13591, #13597, #13598 (as of 22 Sept):

Total: 2,946 deaths; 5,674 injured. (Details on deaths (not complete): 1,684 in Al Haouz Province, 980 in Taroudant Province (as of Sept 14); 202 in Chichaoua Province, and 18 in Marrakesh Prefecture (as of Sept 11). As of 22 Sept, At least 59,674 houses were damaged, of which 32% have totally collapsed,. (As of 22 Sept) damaged 2,930 villages/districts in the High Atlas mountains with a total population of 2.8 million people.

Ref #13720, #13724: $7 billion in losses

Ref #1250: 2497 deaths, 2476 injured, $7 billion in total damages