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This one was minor, big one is yet to come

Today a major earthquake struck Pakistan, North India and Afghanistan. In India Jammu & Kashmir is the most affected state. One of my friend Namrata lives there. She was in her office when the earth quake struck, her office is partly destroyed and three computers were totally gone. She told that she experienced tremors several time in the day. She did not get hurt and she is safe. My other friends in north india are also safe and sound. However, the earth quake episode seems to be not over yet, there are one or more more huge earth quakes waiting arround the corner. According to Indian Express:

"One or more great earthquakes (toll of 200,000 plus) may be overdue in a large fraction of the Himalayas.’’

Over centuries, the Indian plate—one of the 13 that make up the earth’s crust—has been moving towards the adjacent Eurasian plate at an average speed of 4 cm per year. This movement has cracked the Indian plate into several faults, slowly building up stress both in the faults and in the plate boundaries.

That stress can only be relieved through a ‘‘great quake,’’ said internationally renowned quake specialists Roger Bilham and Peter Molnar of the University of Colorado, Boulder, USA and Vinod K. Gaur, who is with the Indian Institute of Astrophysics, Bangalore.

Speaking to The Sunday Express from Port Blair, where he is studying the Andaman Fault in the wake of the tsunami, Bilham said that today’s quake has ‘‘not been (strong) enough for the pent-up stress to be relieved.’’ The worst case scenario: a quake in what experts call the ‘‘Main Boundary Thrust’’—the line between the two plates—that stretches from Kashmir to the North East, right below the Himalayan range.

Today’s epicentre near Muzaffarabad in PoK is close to four major fault lines in the Indian plate. The fact that the quake was 33 km below the earth’s surface helped reduce the damage. Preliminary reports suggest that it could be in the Tarbela fault that lies in the Indus basin.

Of magnitude 7.4 recorded at 9:20 am IST, the location of the earthquake was 34.6 degree North and 73 degree East. Until late this evening, there were eight tremors, the biggest one at 16:16 which recorded 6 on the Richter scale. A study of the location of these aftershocks shows that it is in the same fault but a bit more north, reflecting the stress that has been built up as a result of the main earthquake in the morning.

The silver lining, Bilham said, was that this should be a ‘‘wake-up call’’ to both India and Pakistan that ‘‘here was a common enemy they share.’’ Extra vigilance and strict monitoring of building codes have to be enforced, he said.

It is just so disturning to see all the massive deaths occurring across the world due to hurrincanes, landslides, viruses, earthquakes, terrorists and war. It seems as if as told by my mom - "World seems to be coming to an end."