paragraph on gujarat earthquake which broke out in 2001
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paragraph on gujarat earthquake which broke out in 2001
Answer:
A massive earthquake struck Gujarat on January 26, 2001, India’s fifty-first republic day. The border district of Kachchh, which bore the brunt of the fury, was almost completely destroyed, with the urban areas of Bhuj (the district headquarters), Anjar, Bhachau and Rapar suffering the maximum devastation.
The quake, said to be the second strongest in the last fifty years in any part of India, measured 6.9 on the Richter scale [Indian Meteorological Department (IMD)’s recordings]. The entire northern Indian belt experienced tremors while “vibrations” were felt even as far south as Chennai. Mild tremors were also felt in Kolkata, Shillong, Agartala and Nepal.
The epicenter of the earthquake of January 26 is .believed to have fallen on the Alia Bund fault (the scarp that emerged after the 1819 Kachchh quake) within the Indian plate. (When an earthquake occurs along a fault line within the plate, it is called an intra-plate earthquake. The majority of the earthquakes occur along plate boundaries and not on intra-plate faults.)
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The Alia Bund fault, which is a minor fault, has a history of earthquakes. The earthquake of 1819 had a magnitude of 8.0 on the Richter scale and was located 20 km north of Bhuj. Since 1956 eighty-five earthquakes of varying intensities have been recorded from the same area.
Several thousands died and lakhs were injured; lakhs of houses were destroyed or damaged.
Interestingly, the nuclear power installations remained unaffected even though the earthquake was recorded at all of India’s power reactors located at Kakrapar (Gujarat), Rawatbhata (Rajasthan), Tarapur (Maharashtra), Narora (Uttar Pradesh), Kalpakkam (Tamil Nadu) and Kaiga (Karnataka).
Even the Kakrapar atomic power station located closest to the epicentre, in the Surat district of Gujarat, continued to work satisfactorily. According to officials, nuclear power plants are, in the main, built on hard rock foundations and are fitted with seismic detectors that will order the plant to shut down, should the ground motion exceed a particular level.
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But the quake adversely affected small and medium industries and historical monuments.
Tackling the Disaster Vinod K Gaur, professor at the Indian Institute of Astrophysics, Bangalore, suggests in an article in The Times of India that “there is an overwhelming need to make a scientific assessment of earthquake hazard in all areas of perceived threat, notably the populous cities bordering the Himalayan foothills, and design appropriate mitigation strategies for enforcing regulatory measures in land use, construction practices and infrastructure planning.
Advance planning helps to identify vulnerable community assets, support systems and cost-effective remedial measures. Immediate priorities should be focussed on retrofitting of vulnerable buildings and lifelines, educational and awareness programmes to engender hazard consciousness and early advance warning for evacuation and closure of power and transport systems. Finally, there should be a quick assessment of the geographical spread of damage to direct rescue and relief operations.
“These tasks are extremely demanding, but recent developments in earthquake science, sensor design, telemetry, on-line computing and communication systems hold considerable promise to revolutionise the effectiveness of risk reduction strategies. Earthquake hazard zonation maps of India have been prepared and revised since 1953, and resilient building codes formulated by the Indian Bureau of Standards (BIS). However, greater understanding has now been gained of Himalayan tectonics, and DST, CSIR supported endeavours are underway to define the style and rate of these processes.
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It now appears feasible to draw up a first order quantitative hazard map of India. The next task, of quantifying vulnerability, is more complex, because it requires a detailed knowledge of the terrain, habitation density, network geometry of lifelines and engineering characteristics of dwellings and public buildings. This can be accomplished by bringing together social and economic geographers, urban planners and engineers, to evolve a framework for representing vulnerability and actually determining it for some selected area(s) of high perceived risk.
“Endeavours to prepare a vulnerability atlas were made, based on the 1991 Census, under the urban planning ministry. But more incisive articulation is necessary for a meaningful evaluation of risk. Several proxy indicators are available from the national survey agencies’ soil and topography maps. Others like night luminosity and soil texture can be abstracted from satellite imagery.
“The final act of producing risk maps is not quite straightforward. Considerable literature on the subject as well as computational tools are available to help one design the first steps, fashioned for our specific socio-economic milieu.