A Sudden Shudder in the Deep

In the morning of 22 November 1995, at approximately 07:15 local KSA time, a powerful earthquake struck the Gulf of Aqaba region. The event was of magnitude 7.2 and had its epicentre off the coast between Saudi Arabia and Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula. The earthquake caused several casulaties and widespread damage in coastal communities in the Gulf and was felt widely across the region.

Tectonic Context: When Plates Collide

The Gulf of Aqaba lies along the southern arm of the Dead Sea Transform (DST) — a major plate-boundary fault system, extending from the Red Sea in the south to Turkey in the north. The DST separates the Arabian tectonic plate plate to the east from the Sinai plate to the west.

The 1995 quake ruptured a key segment of this system (the “Aragonese” fault segment) via left-lateral strike-slip motion, combined with a component of normal faulting. The event remains as the largest earthquake to occur on the entire DST for more than a century and was a stark reminder of that the DST is capable of producing large, destructive earthquakes.

Impacts and Aftermath

Though the damage was less catastrophic than in some other global Mw 7+ events, the quake left a significant mark:

• Coastal towns in Egypt and Saudi Arabia, notably Nuweiba and Haql, suffered damage to well-built concrete structures.
• Cities in Jordan (Aqaba) felt strong shaking, ground faults, rock-falls and in some cases liquefaction.
• A small tsunami was registered in the Gulf, surprising scientitsts who had not expected sea-waves triggered by a strike-slip event.
• The quake marked the beginning of an extended seismic swarm of after-shocks lasting into late 1997, numbering in the thousands.

Why It Still Matters

• Hazard awareness: The 1995 event remains the largest instrumentally recorded quake in the region, underscoring its importance for realizing what can be expected on other portions of the DST in the future.
• Engineering implications: The shaking and ground motion data from the event have informed building-code revisions, especially for shoreline infrastructure and coastal tourism hubs.
• Geoscience insight: The rupture activated only a part of the fault system in the Gulf and refined models of it help to study the fault mechanics, stress distribution and post-seismic behaviour in the region.

Looking Ahead

Coastal tourism development continues at a rapid pace across the Gulf region. The seismic events of 1995 have prompted the adoption of rigorous preparedness protocols to mitigate the impact of future incidents.

In Memory and Motivation

Though the 1995 Gulf of Aqaba earthquake has long slipped from the public’s mind, it endures as a turning point for the scientific, engineering, and urban-planning communities—spurring national efforts to improve earthquake hazard assessments and to build cities capable of withstanding future shocks.