TREMORS

The Nepal earthquake (also referred to as the Himalayan earthquake) was a magnitude 7.8 (Mw) earthquake that occurred at 11:56 NST (6:11:26 UTC) on Saturday 25 April 2015, with the epicenter approximately 34 km (21 mi) east-southeast of Lamjung, Nepal, and the hypocenter at a depth of approximately 15 km (9.3 mi). It is the most powerful earthquake to have hit Nepal since the 1934 Nepal–Bihar earthquake. Over 1,900 people are known to have died as a result of the earthquake with casualties reported in Nepal and adjoining areas of India, China, and Bangladesh. It was the deadliest day on Mount Everest, surpassing the death toll in the 2014 Mount Everest avalanche. Centuries-old buildings were destroyed in the UNESCO World Heritage sites in the Kathmandu Valley, including some at Kathmandu Durbar Square.(Wikipedia)

 

I remember an incident years back , we used to sleep on terrace in summer. It was a cool and starry night . Soon I was asleep. At midnight I was awakened by a rumbling noise, the vibrations penetrated my bones. I gasped for breath and wondered what it was. I felt the tremors on the floor and knew for sure that it was an earthquake. I woke everybody up. The vibrations had lasted for seconds only.. my family did not notice anything and they all went to sleep. It took quite sometime for me to get back to sleep. Next morning there were headlines in the newspapers that our city had experienced an earthquake. Many people experienced the tremors in different parts of the city.. No damage or loss of life was reported. I thanked the almighty!

 

Another incident i recall,of childhood when we were in Srinagar. We were playing outside on the playground. A sudden moms cry calling us all to come out of our houses . She witnessed the vessels and articles on the stand starting tumbling . We heard the rumbling sound, we could see our house and ground tilted to some degrees and back. People came out shrieking. God know what was the scale of the richter. We were too young to know what was it all about.

 

By Gods grace no tragic incident had occurred . It was indeed a memorable hair raising incident though. 

 

There were n number of questions in my mind. What caused the Earth to Tremor. The encyclopedia was referred. It said that sudden release of energy in the earths crust creates seismic waves.. Earthquakes are caused mostly by rupture of geological faults, huge amount of gas migration mainly methane deep within the earth, also by volcanic activity landslides mine blasts and Nuclear experiments. Remember the earthquake in Gujrat (26January 2001), nearly 20, thousand people were killed and many thousands rendered homeless.The Tsunami waves (26December 2004).. The earthquake in China on 12 of May 2008 left thousands of homes and families devastated! I felt the pangs of sorrow . I pondered we can know the impending disaster of climate etc. by the help of satellite .Isn’t there any way to know the impending earthquakes so that we could save the lives of people. 

 

A couple of years back:

The BBC News “Plan for Quake warning System” by Paul Rincon had caught my attention . I gave a sigh of hope and read it eargely. In the news they reported that NASA has achieved a breakthrough in forcasting earthquake. They have found a link between the electrical disturbances occurring at the edge of our atmosphere and the impending quakes on the ground below. Signals were spotted during devastation in China . Minoru Freund a physicist and director for advanced aerospace material and devices at NASA Ames Research Centre in California told BBC “I do believe that we will be able to establish a correlation between certain earthquakes and certain pre-earthquakes signals in the unbiased way”.

The Research is going on. Earthquaqe in Gujrat

 

A lot of devastation of Japan due to the recent earthquake and Tsunami waves has triggered new peril for the whole of mankind. The Nuclear Plants getting damaged by the earthquakes. The Fukushima Nuclear Plant is quake damaged . A Nuclear War not from the countries or Terrorrists but by natural calamities is going on. The fresh memories of Chernobyl disaster in 26th April 1986 in Ukraine when millions of people suffered the blast and the aftermaths. 

 

At Home:

India has 20 nuclear reactors in operation in total six nuclear plants. People are concerned and fear the nuclear explosions due to seismic or any other activity. 

 

What amount of security measures can we take for Natural disasters.? If Japan is prone for earthquakes why were it permitted for Nulear Development. Actually none of the countries should be permitted for Nuclear Armaments or Energy Source. Why are we not learning lessons from the recent disasters.