Disaster management experts of Indian Union Home Ministry have warned that a bigger catastrophe – earthquakes with a magnitude of 8.2 or greater on the Richter scale – may hit the already ruptured Himalayan region.
They say quakes with higher intensity than the one that struck Manipur on Monday are likely to rock the region in future, a report of Times of India says.
The tectonic shift, which a series of these recent earthquakes have caused in the region – Manipur 6.7 (January 2016), Nepal 7.3 (May 2015) and Sikkim 6.9 (2011), has re-ruptured the plates that had already developed cracks during previous temblors. This has led to conditions which might trigger multiple earthquakes which may go up to 8.0 in magnitude.
In a post-Nepal disaster assessment, the MHA’s National Institute of Disaster Management (NIDM) has warned of enhanced risk around the “ring of fire garlanding the entire north India especially the mountains.”
Quoting NIDM Director Santosh Kumar, the Times of India report says the interconnected plates across Nepal, Bhutan, Myanmar and India pose a bigger danger, and predicted a disaster of bigger magnitude that awaits hill states and parts of Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and even Delhi which fall under the second worst seismic Zone IV classification.
The north-east and other hill states fall under severe seismic Zone V.
Monday’s earthquake in Manipur, also jolted Bangladesh that left five panic-stricken people dead and several others injured. In Dhaka, the quake also left three residential buildings tilted to one side at Bangshal, Shakhari Bazar and Shonir Akhra. However, the Indian experts did not say anything specific about the risks of Bangladesh in their opinions.
Though some Indian scientists have reservations, international experts – prominently Roger Bilham, the seismologist of University of Colorado and an authority on the subject – are of the opinion that “the current conditions might trigger at least four earthquakes greater than 8.0 in magnitude. And if they delay, the strain accumulated during the centuries provokes more catastrophic mega earthquakes.”
Santosh Kumar said the Centre has taken measures to sensitise the governments of all the hill states to adopt a common building code that is different from the rest of India.
The recent Itanagar deliberations on sustainable development of mountain states were part of Centre’s earthquake risk mitigation strategy to sensitise policymakers about “the natural time bomb.”
Stress has increased in the mountains of north-east since the Nepal earthquake. Monday’s 6.7 magnitude earthquake in Manipur shows the stress has not been fully released, it has only become worse.
The collision between the Himalayan plate in the north and the Indo-Burmese plate in the east and the risk created as a result is the highest at this moment, according to NIDM experts.
