Afghanistan experienced a magnitude 6 earthquake in its eastern border area with Pakistan, on Sunday the 31st August at 21h17 CAT. The epicentre of the quake was a mere 6km below the surface, in a seismically active area because of ongoing friction between the Eurasian and the Indian tectonic plates.
The earthquake struck just before midnight local time on Sunday in a mountainous region near the city of Jalalabad, along the eastern border with Pakistan. It was of a relatively low 6.0 magnitude. But its epicentre was shallow at 8km underground, resulting in strong shaking on the surface and a series of aftershocks.
By Friday, GDACS was reporting a death toll at 2205, with injuries to 3604 people and the destruction of 6782 houses. People in the surrounding areas affected by the earthquake number about 497000, of whom 263000 are children.
Most of the dead and injured were sleeping indoors at the time of the earthquake, and were crushed by collapsing buildings. Because of the remoteness of the affected areas, and also blockage of road networks from landslides caused by the earthquake, the exact death toll may take a long time to find out.
Rural communities in Afghanistan can’t afford sturdy and manufactured building materials. Because of this they build homes with locally available natural materials such as earth, stone and raw lumber.
Such buildings do not follow engineered designs, building codes or formal professional standards that prevent easy damage by earthquakes in wealthier countries.
A typical form of construction in Afghan rural areas is walls made of mud bricks or stone masonry. This is known as “monolithic” construction.
Such construction is unable to resist the strong side-to-side shaking caused by an earthquake. As a result, buildings easily tumble and crush people. Reports of collapsed rubble where there were once buildings are emerging widely from Afghanistan, as was also the case in previous earthquakes.
More than one aftershock has been recorded in the area, the last, of magnitude 5.6 being measured on 4th September at 18h56 CAT.
Next door, Pakistan is experiencing the heaviest monsoon flooding in 40 years. GDACS says that the flooding is due to unprecedented water releases from the Sutlej, Chenab, and Ravi rivers. This is affecting more than 2.4 million people and displacing more than 1 million people.
As of 6th September, 884 fatalities and 1,182 injuries had been reported, while the UN reported 1.8 million evacuations and the creation of over 700 relief camps sheltering 12,500 people.
Meanwhile Portugal is mourning a devastating crash of a funicular train in Lisbon, called the Elevador da Gloria, which lost control as the carriage was coming down a steep hillside, derailed and crashed into a building.
Funiculars consist of two carriages on each end of a very strong cable. As one carriage comes down the hill on its end of the cable, the other carriage goes up the hill. In this way, a train coach can ascend or descend a steep slope in a controlled manner.
It seems, though not proven, that the cable snapped and the descending coach’s brakes were unable to slow the 20 ton carriage down or stop it. 16 people of many nationalities were killed and at least 20 injured
The company that operates the Elevador da Gloria has said regular inspections — including daily checks — had been carried out as required. It is therefore unlikely that negligence was at work. Portugal has declared 3 days of national mourning after the accident.
The City of Cape Town’s Disaster Risk Management held its annual Koeberg Nuclear Power Station Exercise, in conjunction with ESKOM this last Thursday, the 4th September. HAMNET has a MOU with DRM and was represented at the exercise by Danie ZS1OSS, who sent me this report. He says:
“The Annual Koeberg Nuclear Power Station exercise was held by City of Cape Town’s Disaster Risk Management on Thursday 4 September 2025 in conjunction with Eskom and many other national, provincial and local agencies. This is a mandatory exercise that the City Disaster Management and Eskom must conduct to test the readiness of the various departments and agencies that must respond if there were to be a real nuclear disaster. The exercise is also important to identify shortcomings that must be improved on, as well as for the various departments and agencies to practice their own skills and how to operate together with other agencies.
“HAMNET‘s role is one of emergency communications. HAMNET is present to monitor developments, as it is essential to have a situational awareness if deployment is required. If communication dead spots are encountered, or if communications completely fail at any location, a HAMNET member would be deployed to that location to ensure communications can be maintained with the decision makers in the Strategic Room. For this exercise, HAMNET deployed Danie ZS1OSS, assisted by Jannie ZS1JFK and Shawn ZS1LED.
“The exercise started off with a situation being simulated at Koeberg Nuclear Power Station, which escalated to the point that an activation SMS was sent out at 09:30 for all agencies to deploy to their various posts. Such a deployment is all pre-planned and consists of some agencies deploying to one of the Mass Care Centre (MCC) locations, others to traffic road blocks, the mobilization of two passenger bus services for evacuation, and others to their pre-allocated seats in the Strat Room at Goodwood Disaster Risk Management Centre. HAMNET took the opportunity to test their simplex radio communications between the Strat Room and the Auditorium in the building, and the Meshtastic radios were also tested, with one being situated at the border of the Koeberg Nature Reserve. A quick debrief was done when things got quieter nearer the end of the exercise, and it was interesting to note that over repeated exercises there are newer faces asking new questions, as well as more experienced members identifying deeper issues that may arise. This is the whole point of holding exercises and drills, after all! The all clear was given at 13:40 and the exercise ended.”
Thank you, Danie. I believe there may be a follow up report in a future edition of RadioZS.
This is a very disappointed Dave Reece ZS1DFR, packing my green and gold jersey away until next week, and reporting for HAMNET in South Africa.