PLANETARY TREMORS: Strong Magnitude 6.0 Earthquake Hits The Bay Of Bengal - Tremors Felt In East India, Delhi, And Chennai! [MAPS+TECTONIC SUMMARY]

May 21, 2014 - BAY OF BENGAL & THE ANDAMAN SEA BASIN - Mild to moderate tremors were felt in northern and eastern India on Wednesday night.

USGS earthquake location map.

Tremors were felt in places like Kolkata, Bhubaneshwar, Ranchi, Gaya and Chennai.

In Chennai tremors were felt in parts of Nungambakkam, Porur and Triplicane, according to some reports.

Tremors were also felt in Delhi and NCR.

The epicentre of earthquake was in Bay of Bengal, 275 km South-East of Paradip Garh. Its magnitude was 6:0 on the Richter scale and depth was 10 km, as per India Meterological Department.

The tremors struck around 9:52 pm.

USGS earthquake shakemap intensity

The tremor was felt for a few seconds in many areas of Odisha, including state capital Bhubaneshwar but it was enough to trigger panic among people who immediately moved out of buildings, PTI reported.

Panic also gripped several parts of Odisha's Kendrapara district where residents felt the tremors for about 10 seconds.

No reports of damage to human life and property has been reported as yet.  - ZEE News.

Tectonic Setting and Seismotectonic History of the Andaman Sea Basin.

The Andaman Sea is a highly folded and spreading geosynclinal basin, about 650 km wide from east to west and about 1200 km long from north to south. Its total area is estimated to be 600,000 to 800,000 km2.

The Andamans and the Nicobars are a group of 349 islands - summits of a submarine mountain range situated on the western side of the basin, formed by tectonic interactions. The present configuration resulted about 26 million years ago. The islands are the boundary separating the Andaman Sea basin from the Indian Ocean. The Andaman group has a total of 325 islands, while the Nicobar group has 24 islands. Only 38 of these islands are inhabited.

Tectonic Setting - The Andaman Sea Basin, is a seismically active region at the southeastern end of the Alpine-Himalayan belt,. For millions of years the India tectonic plate has moved in a north/northeast direction, colliding with the Eurasian tectonic plate. The Indian plate's eastern boundary, along the Andaman and Nicobar islands and Northern Sumatra, is a diffuse zone of seismicity and deformation, characterized by extensive faulting and numerous large shallow and intermediate earthquakes.

The Burma microplate encompasses the northwest portion of the island of Sumatra, as well as the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. Further to the east of the Andaman and Nicobar islands, a divergent boundary separates the Burma plate from the Sunda plate.

Seismotectonic History - The seimotectonic history of the region is extensively covered in the scientific literature (Sinvhal et al.1978, Verma et al. 1978). More recent research documents the following regional tectonic evolution. Accordingly, an extensional feature developed along a leaky transform segment of the megashear zone - the Andaman fault - between the Indo-Australian domain and the Sunda-Indochina block (Uyeda and Kanamori, 1979; Taylor and Karner, 1983). This old shear zone acted as a western strike slip guide for the extrusion of the Indochina block about 50-20 My (Tapponnier et al., 1986) - and in response to the indentation of the Indian tectonic plate into Eurasian block.

Collision of Indochina with the Sunda and Australian blocks stopped this crustal extrusion process. Subsequently, the Andaman fault system - recently prolonged through the Sumatra zone (the Sumatra fault) - reactivated due to the lateral escape of the Sumatra forearc sliver plate and as a result of the oblique convergence and subduction with the Indo-Australian plate.

The Indian plate's oblique subduction beneath the Burmese Microplate has created the Andaman segment of the great Sunda Trench. The Andaman and Nicobar Islands are located within the tectonic sliver near the boundary of the Indian plate and the Burmese Microplate. Similarly the oblique subduction has created the north-south trending West Andaman fault - another strike-slip fault system in the Andaman Sea to the east of the island chain.

The Volcanic Arc - The subduction process has also formed a volcanic arc. There are two known volcanoes along this arc. The one in the North is known as the Barren Island Volcano - considered active as it has erupted within recent times. The other is known as the Narcondum volcano and is considered dormant.

Seismicity of the Region - Shallow and occasional intermediate-depth earthquakes delineate the subducted slab under the Andaman-Nicobar islands joining the seismicity trend of the Indo-Burman ranges. The active seismicity of the Andaman Sea Basin, has caused many minor and intermediate earthquakes, a few major events ,and only one known earthquake with magnitude greater than 8. According to the literature (Bapat 1982) from 1900 to 1980, a total of 348 earthquakes were recorded in the area bounded by 7.0 N to 22.0 N and 88.0 E to 100 E. - Dr. George P.C.

INFRASTRUCTURE & SOCIETAL COLLAPSE: High-Speed Train Plows Into Crowd Of Hindu Pilgrims In East India - 37 Dead So Far; Many Wounded; Scene Of Carnage!

August 19, 2013 - INDIA - A high-speed train plowed into a crowd of Hindu pilgrims who were crossing the tracks at a remote station in east India on Monday, killing dozens of people and leaving a scene of carnage.

Of the 37 Hindu pilgrims killed, four were children. Reuters

An enraged crowd dragged out the driver and began beating him, and set parts of the train on fire, sending up a pillar of thick black smoke that could be seen miles away.

The New York Times

The crowd remained so furious that hours passed before firefighters and rescue workers were able to approach the site of the accident, officials said. A train sent to help the wounded was forced to halt on the tracks a mile away.

The disaster stood out even in a season of terrible accidents.

The station was a remote one — inaccessible by road — and the high-speed Rayja Rani Express typically barrels through without stopping at a speed of around 50 miles an hour. Railway officials said the driver had been given clearance to pass through.

But Monday was the last day of a holy month in India, and hundreds of people were disembarking from two stopped passenger trains while on their way to a temple a half-mile away to offer holy water to Shiva, the Hindu god of destruction.


A top official at the railway ministry, Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury, said the driver had pulled the emergency brake when he saw people on the tracks but was unable to stop the train.

“It was all quite frightening,” said Rohit Kumar, a passenger, who jumped off the train and ran for a quarter-mile to the nearest station when the crowd began to attack. “I’m standing here and watching smoke billowing out from the train. It was nightmarish. So scary.”

S.K. Singh, the deputy magistrate of the Saharsa District, said 37 people were confirmed dead, including several children. India’s railway minister, Mallikarjun Kharge, said 28 had died, and noted that the pilgrims were crossing the tracks illegally. Parliamentary discussion on Monday afternoon deteriorated into a shouting match over whether the government bore responsibility.

A huge mob gathered at the Indian train crash site and beat the driver to death. Reuters

Villagers carried an injured person after the train accident on Monday. Associated Press 

The train stopped a few hundred metres from the crash and the mob pulled out the driver and his assistant and attacked them. The driver was taken to hospital in a critical condition but died from his injuries. Associated Press

The chief minister of Bihar, the state where the disaster occurred, called it “the rarest of rare tragedies.” He pledged 200,000 rupees, or around $3,180, to the victims’ families, and urged the railway ministry to do the same. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh released a statement calling for “calm in the area so that the relief and rescue operations can be carried out without any hindrance.”

The station, Dhamara Ghat, was inaccessible by car because of the current flood season, so rescue workers had to walk more than two miles from the nearest road to reach the injured, a regional police spokesman said.


WATCH: Train accident leaves at 37 dead in India.

A series of disasters have befallen pilgrims in India this year. In June, thousands drowned when flash floods struck the northern state of Uttarakhand, and the Indian authorities evacuated more than 100,000 people. In February, dozens were killed in a train-station stampede at the Kumbh Mela, a Hindu religious festival on the banks of the Ganges and Yamuna Rivers. - NY Times.