Sept. 18: At least four persons, including two children, died and over 100 were injured in Bihar, Sikkim and Bengal in an earthquake on Sunday evening that was felt as far away as Patna and Delhi.
The two minor victims, a boy and a girl, were of Bihar. Additional director-general (headquarters) of Bihar Rajvardhan Sharma confirmed the death of 14-year-old Mohammed Hussein in a stampede in Darbhanga. The incident occurred at Tarauni under Bahadarpur police station when the victim fell down while running for safety after the earthquake.
Darbhanga senior superintendent of police Vikas Vaibhav told The Telegraph: “Mohammed Hussein, son of Md Jaffar, was killed in a stampede after the tremor.”
Sharma also confirmed the death of a seven-year-old girl child in Harnaut police station area in Nalanda district. A wall of a building caved in on Nibha Kumari at Sabanhua village.
The 6.8 magnitude earthquake shook Patna at 6.10.47pm. Its epicentre was about 20km beneath the mountain range that holds the Kanchenjunga peak, 68km northwest of Gangtok and 119km north-northwest of Siliguri of Bengal.
Power lines and mobile connectivity was severely affected in Bihar. The Bihar State Electricity Board officials said the earthquake severely affected the power supply in the state. A 210MW unit of National Thermal Power Corporation (NTPC) at Kahalgaon had to be shut down because of the damage caused by the earthquake. The state would now get only 876MW electricity from the central grids against the normal supply of 1,350MW.
Houses were damaged in Phulwarisharif, Patna, Gangtok, Siliguri, Darjeeling, Kalimpong and Kurseong.
Sources said several houses in Phulwarisharif area of Patna developed cracks because of the tremors. An apartment under construction in Sheikhpura reportedly tilted because of the earthquake.
Panic gripped Patna as the city shook shortly after 6pm. People rushed out of buildings. Even hotels and restaurants became deserted for an hour as nobody dared to enter buildings.
“We were having a meal when suddenly things started to shake. Within moments everyone, including the waiters, started running. The restaurant was on the 14th floor. It was a tedious job running down the steps. It was sheer panic as many were chanting the name of Lord Hanuman and Ram,” said a teenager.
The district collector of East Sikkim, D. Anandan, said in Gangtok that one person had been killed in Rangpo, the town at the Sikkim-Bengal border in a wall collapse. “At least 25 others have been injured by falling debris during the quake in the district,” he said. A baby was killed in Singtam in east Sikkim.
Geophysicists who have been studying underground strain build up along the Himalayas said the earthquake occurred in a region long known to be seismically active because the Indian plate is slipping beneath Tibet at the rate of about 18mm per year.
“There’s strain build up all along this contact zone,” said Vinod Gaur, a geophysicist at the Indian Institute of Astrophysics, Bangalore. “When a 10-km stretch of rock undergoes a compression of 1-metre, it’s ready to go,” Gaur said.
“This earthquake would have released a certain amount of energy beneath the territorial trijunction where Sikkim Nepal and Tibet meet,” he said. Gaur said the mechanism of the earthquake is still under study, but preliminary indications suggest that the western edge of Sikkim may have moved a bit southward with respect to Nepal.
