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Light tremors in some parts of city, Met dept clueless: No quake detector equipment for many areas of city

By Amar Guriro

KARACHI: Light tremors were felt in different areas of the city on Sunday morning including Malir, Korangi Industrial Area, Landhi and Quaidabad.

Though the minor jolts were largely went unnoticed, the frightening part however is that the Pakistan Meteorological Department (PMD) was unable to measure the intensity of the tremors since it has no seismometers installed in the southern and eastern parts of the city.

Light tremors are usually felt in the eastern and southern parts of the city including Defence, Clifton and Malir, but the PMD has no record of these.

Although the department’s early tsunami warning center is operational, major portions of the city are still without seismometers, and therefore its remains clueless over the seismic activity in those areas.

The PMD has also completed one year of the establishment of the early tsunami centre in Karachi, but it has yet to install tide-gauges and seismic sensors in the Arabian Sea so any seismic activity in the sea could be detected.

PMD Chief Meteorologist Mohammad Riaz admitted that the department has not installed seismic devices in major portions of city. “Yes, I heard about the lights tremors in some parts of the city, but we have no record of these since seismometers are not yet installed in these areas even though the city has major earthquake faults including Hub, Sarjani and FAB,” he said.

Riaz further said his department is planning to install seismometers in different parts of the city in the near future and the Pakistani government is also planning to install tide-gauges and seismic sensors in the Arabian Sea in collaboration with UNESCO in the near future.

The city of Karachi lies about 150-km east of the triple junction between the Arabian, Indian, and Asian plates. The recorded history reveals that the residents of Karachi felt shakes of 1945 Makran (Balochistan) and 2001 Bhuj (India) earthquakes, and also irregular jolts from M 4-5 earthquakes on faults north and northwest of the city, but no earthquake has ever produced documented damage in Karachi.

In the past, earthquake-monitoring stations were working in Khuzdar, Quetta, Peshawar, Islamabad and Karachi, but they were following an old style manual operation pattern and were not able to information about an earthquake before 30 minutes.

But after 2004, the tsunami that hit the Indonesian island Sumatra and later the 2005 earthquake in the northern parts of Pakistan, the PMD set up an early tsunami centre in Karachi in 2008. But in the absence of seismic sensors and seismometers, its effectiveness is a major question for many.

Sources said an early tsunami center has modern equipment through which any earthquakes can be record anywhere in world within a minute and the center is bound to immediately inform all the related government and rescue authorities, but such a communication system is not working properly at the early tsunami center in Karachi.

However, the PMD chief meteorologist refuted this and said his department is communicating with all the stakeholders within the scheduled time.

He said if any earthquake occurs, the PMD staff at the early tsunami centre takes five minutes to analyse the information such as the location, magnitude, depth and epicenter. After that it takes seven minutes to send it to the government authorities including the district coordination officer of the five districts of Sindh and Balochistan including Karachi, Thatta, Tharparkar, Badin and Pasni through a short message service on cellular phones, fax and telephone calls and after that the media is informed.

Interestingly, in the media list of the PMD, there are only a few television channels, and none of the print media.

Riaz justified this by saying that the electronic media can broadcast such information immediately. The sources said sometimes the earthquake and tsunami information does not reach the concerned authorities timely.

“That’s not true, we try to send information as soon as possible, but you know that in our country, sometimes the communication system such as fax and SMS service does not work properly,” he said.

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