The state is set to get 13 new earthquake monitoring stations next year, which would make the quake-prone state better equipped to collect information about tremors.

Despite being located in a high seismic zone, the conditions with regard to earthquake monitoring in Bihar have remained insufficient.

The state, at present, has only one earthquake monitoring station at Valmikinagar in West Champaran, which is defunct. As a result, the Patna Meteorological Centre has been mostly found to be ill-equipped to furnish details of seismic activities in case of an earthquake, like the one recorded late on Thursday evening.

The situation is, however, set to improve with the state government working on a project entailing setting up new earthquake monitoring centres in 13 districts. A resource centre is also proposed to be set up at the department of geological sciences at Patna University. (See Graphic)

The project being monitored by Bihar State Disaster Management Authority (BSDMA) envisages development of the monitoring centres at 10 locations by the science and technology department and the remaining three by India Meteorological Department (IMD). The empowered committee of the state government headed by the chief secretary has cleared the project. It is expected to be tabled for a cabinet approval.

BSDMA vice-chairman Anil Kumar Sinha claimed that the proposal for setting up new earthquake centres came as an outcome of a detailed study of the 1934 earthquake in Bihar.

'The IMD has agreed to set up three monitoring centres under one of its national programmes on earthquake monitoring. In a meeting held last year, the state government gave in-principal approval to set up earthquake monitoring centres at 10 more locations. The science and technology department was assigned the responsibility to develop the monitoring centres,' added Sinha.

Ashish Sen, director, Patna Meteorological Centre, claimed that the IMD's headquarters has already approved two earthquake monitoring centres in Bihar under its project titled Modernisation of Seismic Network.

'Though the location of the earthquake monitoring centres to be developed has not been finalised, we are planning to keep them in north Bihar as it is a higher seismic zone. We would also need to look into land availability issues,' said Sen.

With regard to location of the monitoring centres to be set up by the state government, Sinha said they would be mostly on the premises of Industrial Training Institutes or polytechnic colleges.

'The state government has given its in-principal approval on creation of posts for a dedicated team, which would look after the project. A team of scientists would also work on 24x7 for collecting and analysing data on seismic activities sent by the new monitoring centres. We expect that the new centres would be operational in six months,' said BSDMA director Sinha.