Seismic Risk in Ghana: Efforts and Challenges

Abstract

Since 1939, Ghana has experienced its severest earthquake with a magnitude of 6.5 on the Richter scale, which killed seventeen people and caused a lot of damages to property. There have been reported occurrences of earth tremors in recent times, though the region is generally considered a stable continental area with few active tectonic features. Three recent earth tremors were recorded in the country in March and December 2018 and March 2019 with magnitudes ranging from 3.0 to 4.8 on the Richter scale. These tremors caused a lot of panics to the inhabitants of the most affected areas. Earthquake occurrence and observation surveys were conducted in March 2019 in the southern part of the country where the events were most felt. The main objective of the survey was to assess the perception, experiences and adaptation strategies of randomly sampled residents of the area to seismic events. Questionnaires were administered for the survey in the Awutu Senya East and Weija-Gbawe Municipalities. There were divergent views from the inhabitants on their perception, experiences and adaptation strategies to earth tremors in the area. We realized that most of the people were aware that they live in an earthquake prone area, but have no measures in place to mitigate the seismic risk. Therefore, the responsible government agencies need to conduct geological and geophysical investigation on every land acquired before releasing them to developers.