Earthquakes

Climate change and earthquake exposure in Asia and the Pacific: assessment of energy and transport infrastructure

This study analyzes the exposure of energy and transport assets in Asia and the Pacific to climate change and earthquake hazards and highlights how multi-hazard assessment can help strengthen the resilience of crucial infrastructure. Geolocating and undertaking a multi-hazard assessment of more than 30,000 infrastructure assets, the study identifies significant …

PHEROL: BUILT TO LAST

Pherols have withstood the test of earthquakes for over 100 years. They are multi-storeyed structures and the main construction materials are wood and stone with mud mortar. Pherols were developed by a society that believed in a cooperative mode of living. Villagers would assist each other in the construction work. …

North East

A massive earthquake had razed Shillong to the ground in 1897. This led to the creation of the

Walled against quakes

January 26, 2001, 6:34 am. The earth shook violently in Gujarat, clocking somewhere between 6.9 and 7.7 on the Richter scale. Residential apartments, offices, multi-storeyed structures cracked, collapsed and killed more than 40,000 people. More than 300,000 houses were completely destroyed. In the state capital Ahmedabad, most of the damage …

Dealing with disasters

natural disasters are unpredictable, but the way the situation was managed in the recent Gujarat earthquake, for instance, has unearthed many flaws in the existing disaster management system. Unfinished rescue operations, food and water shortage and insufficient medical aid has shown that the country is not geared up to tackle …

Shock absorbers

earthquake-resistant building codes came to the rescue of the residents of Seattle and prevented large-scale damage, when an earthquake measuring 6.8 on the Richter scale struck the city on February 28. The quake was the city's first major test of the building policy, known as seismic retrofitting. "Seattle's regularly-updated building …

Plans gone awry

at least 85-90 per cent villagers in the Kachhch district of Gujarat do not want to be relocated. Most of the houses in the district were destroyed by the earthquake that struck Gujarat on January 26, 2001. A survey conducted by voluntary agencies reports that nine out of 10 villagers …

Water from nowhere

Dhanna Lal, a casual labourer with the Airport Authority of India's Pratapgarh (Rajasthan) office, believes that earthquakes are a cosmic curse. So when his dried village well, some 300 km away from Bhuj, was filled with water immediately after the earthquake, he was baffled. Similar stories abound in even parched …

EL Salvador

At least 274 people were killed and 2,937 injured when an earthquake measuring 6.6 on the Richter scale shook El Salvador on February 13, 2001. The epicentre of the earthquake was 20 kilometres from San Salvador, El Salvador's capital city. Salvador's National Emergency Committee reported that the quake triggered 25 …

Continental drift

Earthquakes occur due to inter-continental collision, and also due to intra-continental rupture of rock plates. About a dozen continental plates float on the Earth's semi liquid crust, just like the floating islands in Manipur's Loktak lake. The Indian plate collided with the Asian one some 38 million years ago forming …

6.9 7.9 or 8.1?

The debate continues. The Indian Meteorological Department (IMD) puts the magnitude at 6.9 on the Richter scale, and France, China and the US measure it at 7.9, later upgraded to 8.1. The National Geophysical Research Institute (NGRI) and the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC) endorse the US assessment. The US …

Republic quaked

There cannot be a bigger irony. As the nation was preparing to smugly display its military might and scientific prowess on Republic Day, a mighty earthquake flattened a large part of Gujarat. The quake, however, did not quite shake the ruling elite, who till afternoon participated in the long ceremonial …

No signs of science

D eath and earthquakes do not come by appointment. However, an earthquake gives definitive indications of its arrival. In Gujarat, there were many. A 4.2 magnitude quake rocked the Rann of Kachhch on December 24, 2000. Its epicentre was 22 km away from Bhuj. Bhavnagar, near Bhuj, also felt several …

Shaky business

T he Gujarat earthquake has proved that even in the highly seismic zones like Bhuj, Uttarakhand and the Northeast, our preparedness and crisis management is a monumental failure. Bhuj is one of the 13 hotspots on India's seismic hazard map that was prepared three years ago. The assessment was that …

Declared arrival

Stage How an earthquake develops What symptoms does it leave behind for study and observation I In the first stage of an earthquake, the two sides of a fault move. Elastic strain slowly builds up in the rocks as a result of it, and the rock particles become compressed together. …

Earth shaking intervention

more than 683 people were killed, 2,412 injured and hundreds reported missing when an earthquake hit Guatemala and El Salvador, two central American nations, on January 13, 2001. The highest number of deaths were reported from Santa Tecla, a suburb of San Salvador, the capital city of El Salvador. Following …

Recent developments toward earthquake risk reduction in India

A developing country like India, with a variety of building practices and social and economic structure, needs to evolve its own strategies for seismic hazard evaluation. Occurrence of few damaging earthquakes during the last decade has pointed to our shortcoming in risk reduction programmes.

IMPENDING DANGER

Experts at a workshop has listed Dhaka as one of the 20 major earthquake-prone cities in the world and have warned that the city would be severely affected if a quake should ever hit it. The city would particularly suffer because of its poor infrastructure to respond to emergency situations …

A lubricated fault?

Researchers have recently found that certain geologic phenomena may exist that could lead to better predictions of earthquakes on the San Andreas fault, which affects San Francisco. The rubbing slabs that form the fault seem to produce less heat than other faults, suggesting that it is lubricated somehow and is …

Understanding earthquakes

The recent earthquakes in Turkey, Taiwan and southern California were the most monitored in history, but months later scientists are just beginning to understand the data. A record number of instruments on the ground and in space analysed every quiver of the ground before, during and after the earthquakes, but …

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