(OPINION) Two earthquakes shook northern Israel within a few hours, bringing the total of earthquakes in Israel this month up to four. Scientists are issuing dire warnings of imminent doom, but rabbis point to the prophecies as proof that people who have faith, have nothing to fear and even that the Messiah’s arrival is “speeding up.”
The first earthquake hit at around 9:00 PM on Tuesday night and measured 3.5 on the Richter scale. ts epicenter was located in Jordan, 9 miles northeast of Beit Shean. On Wednesday morning, about ten hours later, a 3.1 earthquake shook the same area. Teruah (meaning Shofar blast), the new early-warning earthquake system, did not go off because the quakes were determined to be minor and non-life-threatening.
The early warning system that was installed in 2019 is composed of 120 sensors running along a 400-kilometer length of the Dead Sea Rift from Eilat to the Golan Heights can issue an earthquake warning of several seconds up to several minutes, depending on the location of the earthquake’s epicenter.
Just two weeks ago, two earthquakes measuring 3.6 and 3.8 hit within 24–hours of each other with epicenters just south of the Kinneret. According to the Jordanian state news agency Petra, as many as 10 aftershocks were felt in Jordan. However, no damage was reported.
A little over one week ago, the Home Front Command held a large earthquake drill throughout the country. Dr. Ran Nof, a seismologist at the Geological Survey, warned, “A strong earthquake is expected to occur in our area soon. We know they occur is a cycle of about 100 years.
On January 11, a 6.6 magnitude earthquake was recorded off the coast of Cyprus. That earthquake was felt in parts of Israel, as well as in other locations across the region. In early February, another quake off the coast of Cyprus was felt in Israel in what the Cypriot geological survey department said was an aftershock. Israel’s Jordan Valley and the Dead Sea are part of the Syrian-African Rift Valley, which stretches from Lebanon’s Beqaa Valley to Mozambique in Southeastern Africa.
Large earthquakes usually hit Israel approximately once every 90 years and there is concern that another one is due – considering that the most recent one occurred in 1927. That event saw more than 400 people killed and extensive damage to buildings in Jerusalem and Hebron.
Geological experts have recently warned that approximately one million homes in Israel are at risk of collapse in case of an earthquake. According to estimates, a major earthquake could cause about 7,000 deaths and 145,000 injuries, with 170,000 people left homeless and 320,000 buildings damaged. READ MORE
