Seismologists keep a close eye on the Hindu Kush for a reason, and Wednesday gave them another data point. At 17:57:03 UTC on July 1, a magnitude 5.5 earthquake struck about 50 km southwest of Jurm in northeastern Afghanistan, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.
Its source lay 216.7 km below the surface. Think of it like a drumbeat heard through a thick floor: the deeper the origin, the more the energy spreads and weakens before it reaches people. Quakes of this type can be felt across a wide area while generally doing less surface damage than shallow ones.
Nobody had reported casualties or damage at the time of the first reports.
The same patch of mountains, again
This was the second deep event near Jurm within about ten days. A magnitude 5.2 quake hit on June 22, roughly 42 kilometres south-southwest of the town in Badakhshan province, at 207 km down. Livemint’s account of the two events pointed out that both happened in nearly the same area of the Hindu Kush.
On June 27 a larger one rattled both sides of the border. Pakistan’s Meteorological Department called it magnitude 5.9; the USGS measured 6.1. Its epicenter was in the Hindu Kush region of Afghanistan, and people felt it in Islamabad, eastern Punjab, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Kashmir. Kabul shook as well, according to the Afghanistan National Disaster Management Authority. No casualties were reported.
What makes the region so active
The explanation is plate tectonics. Afghanistan lies along the collision zone between the Indian and Eurasian plates, and the Hindu Kush is particularly prone to deep earthquakes that can be felt in Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, Tajikistan and elsewhere in Central and South Asia.
Depth does not always protect people. A magnitude 7.4 earthquake on December 31, 1983, struck 214.5 km beneath the Hindu Kush, south of Fayzabad in Badakhshan. It affected three countries, killing at least 26 people and injuring several hundred.
Farther afield, a magnitude 7.6 quake in 2005 killed tens of thousands of people in Pakistan and the Kashmir region.
Sources
- Magnitude 5.5 earthquake strikes near Jurm in Afghanistan's Hindu Kush region, no immediate reports of damage | Today News
- 1983 Hindu Kush earthquake
