How Alarming Is India's Earthquake Risk? IIT Professor Answers

Engineering solutions can be used for all magnitudes of Earthquakes, said IIT Roorkee Professor.

Rescue team members carry a body of a person found among the rubble of a destroyed building.

Source : PTI

New Delhi: The Indian tectonic plate moves about 2 cm annually, causing stress to build up along the Himalayas and increasing the likelihood of major earthquakes in the coming days, said ML Sharma, Dept of Earthquake Engineering, IIT Roorkee on seismic waves and earthquakes, reported news agency ANI. "The Indian plate is moving 2 cm per year towards north, creating energy for earthquakes. It’s more frequent in Himalayan region because it collides with the Eurasian plates," he said.

Haridwar, U'khand | The Indian plate is moving 2 cm per year towards north, creating energy for earthquakes. It’s more frequent in Himalayan region because it collides with the Eurasian plates: ML Sharma, Dept of Earthquake Engineering, IIT Roorkee on seismic waves & earthquake pic.twitter.com/kyOvlrFSMR

— ANI UP/Uttarakhand (@ANINewsUP) March 23, 2023

"We don’t know when earthquake will come, we must prepare our structures for it, use early warning systems, retrofitting of old buildings, & prepare schools for relief & disaster reduction. Engineering solutions can be used for all magnitudes of Earthquakes," he said as quoted by ANI.

Earlier, earthquake tremors were felt in Delhi on Tuesday night. At least 11 people were killed, while more than 100 people were injured after a magnitude 6.6 earthquake jolted Pakistan and Afghanistan on Tuesday. The epicentre was in Afghanistan and the affected countries included Pakistan, Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, China, and Kyrgyzstan, reports said.

Strong tremors from the earthquake were also felt in Delhi-NCR and across much of northern India on Tuesday. 

"An earthquake with a magnitude of 6.6 on the Richter Scale hit 133km SSE of Fayzabad, Afghanistan today at 10:17 pm IST," said National Centre for Seismology. The US Geological Survey said the centre of the magnitude 6.5 quake was 40km (25 miles) south-south-east of Jurm in Afghanistan’s mountainous Hindukush region, bordering Pakistan and Tajikistan.

Afghanistan’s disaster mitigation ministry told Reuters that at least two people were killed in Laghman province. In neighboring Pakistan, at least nine people died, including a 13-year-old girl who died when a wall collapsed at her home, and at least 100 others were injured.

Meanwhile, the National Disaster Management Authority said on Wednesday that as much as 59% of India's land area faces medium to high risk of earthquakes. The NDMA said that the entire Himalayan region is known to be prone to large earthquakes of magnitude 8 on the Richter scale. In a relatively short span of 50 years, there have been four such large earthquakes — Shillong (magnitude 8.7) in 1897, Kangra (magnitude 8.0) in 1905, Bihar-Nepal (magnitude 8.3) in 1934, and Assam-Tibet (magnitude 8.6) in 1950. Scientific publications have warned about the possibility of a large powerful earthquake (magnitude 8) in the Himalayan region again very soon.