October 26, 2015: A major earthquake has struck Afghanistan and the neighboring countries of Pakistan and India on October 26, 2015. The United States Geological Survey has confirmed that the intensity of the shake was 7.5 on Richter scale. Initial reports in Pakistan suggest that as many as 143 have been killed.
Initial reports suggested that tremble was measured at 7.7 on the Richter Scale and USGS concurred but then revised it to 7.5 and then to the initial estimate by Pakistan Meteorological Department of 7.5. The epicenter of the quake is said to be near the Hindu Kush range, about 45 kilometers south-southwest of Jarm, a city in Afghanistan and its direction was toward the east and southeast region toward Pakistan and India, while the tremors were felt as far as Multan in Pakistan and New Delhi in India.
Buildings in Pakistan shook like houses of cards and traffic halted in anxiety. However, the public behaved in an orderly manner and vacated the buildings in a non-chaotic way. Traffic in Kabul came to a complete stop but no major traffic jams were sighted.
The earthquake comes a week after heavy and continuous rainfall in Afghanistan, while in Pakistan the downpours stopped a day earlier drenching the north and northwest parts of the country. The heavy rainfall is a disaster for mud houses, a normal living style in the rural areas, especially in Afghanistan and Pakistan. There is news of a large number of houses flattening in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Azad Kashmir areas of Pakistan, however, the news is pouring in.
These tremors that lasted for more than a minute in some parts of the region come exactly nine months after a 9-magnitude quake hit Nepal earlier this April. More than 10,000 lives were lost in that heart wrenching calamity while more than 900,000 buildings were damaged.
This shock is considered to be one of the worst in the history of the region. The 2005 earthquake was recorded on the Richter scale at 7.6 and flattened the northern side of Pakistan. It was described as the tectonic plate displacement where the northern areas of Pakistan are situated on the edge of it.
The USGS described this earthquake as “a rupture occurred on either a near-vertical reverse fault or a shallowly dipping trust fault. At the latitude of the earthquake, the Indian subcontinent moves northward and collides with Eurasia at a velocity of about 37 mm/yr,” near Hindu Kush range in Afghanistan 45 km south-southwest of Jarm. The depth of the quake is estimated to be 210 km beneath the range.
The Hindu Kush mountain range is prone to earthquakes, it is the underdeveloped meeting point of the Indian sub continental plate that usually drives into or comes under the Eurasian plate resulting in minor to major earthquakes.
In Kabul, Peshawar, Islamabad, Lahore and New Delhi, hospitals have been put on red alert. The provincial government of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa in Pakistan has declared a state of emergency in the wake of the disaster. Meanwhile, health and emergency response teams in various areas of Pakistan and India are ready to meet any disaster challenges.
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