Dundo – The deputy governor for Technical Services and Infrastructures of the eastern Lunda-Norte province Domingos Dala on Tuesday condemned the robbery and vandalization that occurred Monday at the local seismic station of the National Institute of Meteorology and Geophysics (INAMET).
Domingos Dala said the perpetrators robbed two solar panels that supplied power to the station, adding that this put the country in a very vulnerable position, since authorities are currently unable to detect any seismic activity that could occur locally or in the neighboring Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).
"We can no longer stand by and watch property like this being destroyed, which jeopardizes the lives and well-being of the community," the official said.
Domingos Dala said authorities continue to investigate the robbery to recover the panels, while the local government jointly with INAMET works on an emergency plan to make the Seismic Station operational within a few days.
"In the province of Lunda-Norte it rains a lot and, with the station out of service, we are left without information on the state of the weather, as well as the precise location of an earthquake and its depth, which is unsafe,"Dala said.
With the station out of service it will be impossible to gather information on the exact location of an earthquake (epicenter), its depth, the energy released, the mechanism that generated the tremor and the route that the waves travel to get from the place where they were generated to the sensor that detected them.
Angola currently has five seismic stations made up of state-of-the-art sensors that help transmit information about the movement of the earth's crust (tectonic plates) in real time to INAMATE's central server.HD/AMP
