Kathmandu: Three earthquakes have happened in Bajura district since last night.

According to National Earthquake Monitoring and Research Centre, Lainchaur, three separate quakes took place with their epicenter in Dahakot of Bajura district.

According to the Centre, the first quake with 4.9 Richter scale in the magnitude occurred at 11:58 pm and second with 5.9 in the Richter scale happened at 1:30 in the night.

Likewise, the third quake jolted the district at 3.9 in the Richter scale at 1:51 in the night.
The detail of the damages caused due to the quakes is not received yet, it is stated.

Earlier, a quake had occurred with its epicenter at Jugada area of the district on April 17.
The western belt of the country has witnessed increased number of earthquakes in the recent days.RSS

KATHMANDU, May 16: The government has adopted the policy of completing within fiscal year 2020/21 the reconstruction of structures damaged by the Gorkha Earthquake five years ago. This is stated in the government’s policy and programmes for the fiscal year 2020/21, which President Bidya Devi Bhandari presented to the joint session of the Federal Parliament on Friday.

It is stated that the potential and appropriate production centres would be determined for the easy supply of construction materials required for the post-earthquake reconstruction works by making policy and legal arrangements.

So far, 495 thousand private houses have been rebuilt while the reconstruction of 402 of the 753 archaeological heritages damaged by the earthquake has been completed. It is stated in the policy and programmes document that 40 per cent of reconstruction works of the historic Dharahara and 70 per cent of reconstruction works of historic Ranipokhari have been completed. The government has the policy of expediting the reconstruction works with the easy supply of river-based construction materials without causing harm to the environment and bringing about river erosion.RSS. file photo

TEHRAN, Nov 13: A powerful earthquake shook the Iran-Iraq border late Sunday, killing 207 people and injuring 1,686 in the mountainous region of Iran alone, Iranian state media said.

The Baghdad government did not immediately give word on casualties in that country, though Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi issued a directive for the country’s civil defense teams and “related institutions” to respond to the natural disaster.

The magnitude 7.3 quake was centered 19 miles (31 kilometers) outside the eastern Iraqi city of Halabja, according to the most recent measurements from the US Geological Survey. It struck at a depth of 23.2 kilometers (14.4 miles), a shallow depth that can have broader damage. Magnitude 7 earthquakes on their own are capable of widespread, heavy damage.

The quake was felt as far west as the Mediterranean coast. Its worst damage appeared to be in Iran’s western Kermanshah province, which sits in the Zagros Mountains that divide Iran and Iraq. Residents in the rural area rely mainly on farming to make a living.

Iranian social media and news agencies showed images and videos of people fleeing their homes into the night. Some 50 aftershocks followed.

Iran’s state-run television reported the increase in casualties early on Monday and said rescue work was continuing overnight and would accelerate during the daytime.

Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei offered his condolences on Monday morning and urged rescuers and all government agencies to do all they could to help those affected, state media reported.

The semi-official ILNA news agency said at least 14 provinces in Iran had been affected by the earthquake.

Officials announced that schools in Kermanshah and Ilam provinces would be closed on Monday because of the temblor.

Iranian state TV also said Iraqi officials reported that at least six people dead inside Iraq, along with more than 50 people injured in Sulaymaniyah province and about 150 in the town of Khanaquin.

Iran sits on many major fault lines and is prone to near-daily quakes. In 2003, a magnitude 6.6 earthquake flattened the historic city of Bam, killing 26,000 people. The last major casualty earthquake in Iran struck in East Azerbaijan province in August 2012, killing over 300 people. AP

MEXICO CITY, Sept 8: A massive 8.1-magnitude earthquake hit off the coast of southern Mexico, toppling houses in Chiapas state, causing buildings to sway violently as far away as the country’s distant capital and setting off a tsunami warning.

The U.S. Geological Survey said the quake struck at 11:49 p.m. Thursday local time and its epicenter was 165 kilometers (102 miles) west of Tapachula in Chiapas state not far from Guatemala. It had a depth of 35 kilometers (22 miles).

The U.S. Tsunami Warning System said hazardous tsunami waves were possible on the Pacific coasts of several Central American countries, including Guatemala, El Salvador, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Panama and Honduras, within three hours. There was no tsunami threat for the U.S. West Coast, but the warning system said waves could reach Mexico and as far as Ecuador.

“The house moved like chewing gum and the light and internet went out momentarily,” said Rodrigo Soberanes, who lives near San Cristobal de las Casas in Chiapas, a poor, largely indigenous state popular with tourists.

Chiapas Gov. Manuel Velasco told television station Televisa the rooves of homes and a shopping center had collapsed in San Cristobal.

“There are damages in hospitals that have lost energy,” he said. “Homes, schools and hospitals have been affected.”

Civil Defense in Chiapas said on its Twitter account that its personnel were in the streets aiding people and warned residents to prepare for aftershocks.

The quake was so powerful that frightened residents in Mexico City more than 1,000 kilometers (650 miles) away fled apartment buildings, often in their pajamas, and gathered in groups in the street.

Buildings swayed strongly for more than one minute, loosening light fixtures from ceilings. Helicopters crisscrossed the sky above Mexico City with spotlights. Some neighborhoods kept electricity while others remained in darkness.

In neighboring Guatemala, President Jimmy Morales spoke on national television to call for calm while emergency crews checked for damage.

“We have reports of some damage and the death of one person, even though we still don’t have details,” Morales said. He said the unconfirmed death occurred in San Marcos state near the border with Mexico.

Lucy Jones, a seismologist in California who works with the U.S. Geological Survey, said such as quake was to be expected.

“Off the west coast of Mexico is what’s called the subduction zone, the Pacific Plate is moving under the Mexican peninsula,” she said. “It’s a very flat fault, so it’s a place that has big earthquakes relatively often because of that.”

“There’s likely to be a small tsunami going to the southwest. It’s not going to be coming up and affecting California or Hawaii,” she said. “For tsunami generation, an 8 is relatively small.” AP

ATHENS, July 21: A powerful earthquake shook the Greek resort island of Kos overnight, damaging older buildings and the main port, killing at least two people and causing more than 120 injuries.

The 6.5-magnitude quake about 1:30 a.m. Friday rattled other islands and Turkey’s Aegean coast as well, but Kos was nearest to the epicenter and appeared to be the worst-hit, with all of the deaths and injuries reported there. Fallen bricks and other debris coated many streets, and the island’s seafront road and parts of the main town were flooded by a small tsunami.

Giorgos Hadjimarkos, regional governor, said four or five of the injuries were “worrying” and damaged buildings were being inspected, but the “main priority at the moment is saving lives.” The Kos hospital said at least 20 of the injured had broken bones.

A wall collapsed on a building dating to the 1930s and it crushed people who were at the bar in the building’s lower level, according to Kos Mayor Giorgos Kyritsis. “There are not many old buildings left on Kos. Nearly all the structures on the island have been built under the new codes to withstand earthquakes,” the mayor said.

Kos’s “old town” area, full of bars and other nighttime entertainment, was littered with broken stone in the streets. Hotels had shattered glass and other damage, leaving hundreds of tourists to spend the rest of the night outdoors, trying to sleep on beach loungers with blankets provided by staff.

“The instant reaction was to get ourselves out of the room,” said Christopher Hackland of Edinburgh, Scotland, who is a scuba instructor on Kos. “There was banging. There was shaking. The light was swinging, banging on the ceiling, crockery falling out of the cupboards, and pans …

“There was a lot of screaming and crying and hysterics coming from the hotel,” he said, referring to the hotel next to his apartment building. “It felt like being at a theme park with one of the illusions, an optical illusion where you feel like you’re upside down.”

Authorities had warned of a localized tsunami, and witnesses described a “swelling” of the sea after the earthquake. A seafront road and parts of the island’s main town were flooded, and the rising seawater even pushed a boat onto the main road and caused several cars to slam into each other. Ferry service was canceled until daylight because Kos’s main port was damaged, and at least one ferry en route to the port was unable to dock.

Other buildings damaged included an old mosque where a minaret collapsed and a 14th-century fortress at the entrance to the main port. Minor damage — cracks in buildings, smashed windows and trashed shops — appeared widespread.

Rescuers were checking for trapped people inside houses after the quake struck in the middle of the night and were heading to outlying villages to check for damage.

Greek officials said the quake was 6.5-magnitude and the numerous aftershocks were weaker but still could put at risk the buildings that were already damaged. The epicenter was 6 miles (10 kilometers) south of Bodrum, Turkey, and 10 miles (16 kilometers) east-northeast of Kos with a depth of 6 miles (10 kilometers).

In Turkey, the ensuing panic caused minor injuries, according to Esengul Civelek, governor of Mugla province.

In Bitez, a resort town about 6 kilometers (4 miles) west of Bodrum, the quake sent frightened residents running into the streets.

Hotel guests briefly returned to their rooms to pick up their belongings but chose to spend the rest of the night outside, with some using sheets and cushions borrowed from nearby lounge chairs to build makeshift beds.

Greece and Turkey lie in an especially earthquake-prone zone.-AP

WELLINGTON: A magnitude 6.5 earthquake struck south of New Zealand’s capital on Friday, sending panicked Wellington workers and residents into the streets, but caused little major damage just weeks after a similar size quake shook the harbourside city.

The quake, which hit near the northern tip of New Zealand’s South Island, was dangerously shallow at a depth of about 8 km (5 miles), similar to a deadly tremor that shattered the south island city of Christchurch in 2011.

“The building just shook and it went on and on and on. There’s a lot of police out here and fire sirens going off. It’s pretty frightening,” said Chris Birks, General Manager of the Hotel d’Urville in Blenheim, near the quake epicenter.

Fire authorities said it was too early to assess the impact fully. There were reports of superficial damage to buildings from the quake, which shattered windows and sent items tumbling from supermarket shelves.

The U.S. Geological Survey originally measured the quake with a magnitude of 6.8 but later revised that figure down to 6.5. New Zealand quake monitoring service GNS Science put the magnitude at 6.2.

The quake did not trigger a widespread tsunami alert, according to the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center, although there was a series of strong aftershocks.

Some people were trapped in lifts in Wellington, a city of 400,000 that sprawls across hills along a major geological fault.

Air, rail and bus services were suspended while officials checked tracks, runways and roads for damage, and trading on New Zealand’s NZX stock exchange was halted temporarily.

The quake sent the New Zealand dollar tumbling around a third of a U.S. cent to $0.8067.

The quake hit near the city of Dingxi in Gansu province, a region of mountains, desert and pastureland with a population of 26 million. That makes it one of China’s more lightly populated provinces, although the New Jersey-sized Dingxi area has a greater concentration of farms and towns with a total population of about 2.7 million.

The deaths and injuries were reported in Min County and other rural southern parts of the municipality, Dingxi Mayor Tang Xiaoming told state broadcaster CCTV. Tang said damage was worst in the counties of Zhang and Min, where scores of homes were damaged and telephone and electricity services knocked out.

Residents described shaking windows and swinging lights but little major damage and little panic. Shaking was felt in the provincial capital of Lanzhou 177 kilometers (110 miles) north, and as far away as Xi’an, 400 kilometers (250 miles) to the east.

“You could see the chandeliers wobble and the windows vibrating and making noise, but there aren’t any cracks in the walls. Shop assistants all poured out onto the streets when the shaking began,” said a front desk clerk at the Wuyang Hotel in the Zhang County seat about 40 kilometers (25 miles) from the epicenter. The clerk surnamed Bao refrained from identifying herself further, as is common among ordinary Chinese.

The government’s earthquake monitoring center said the initial quake at 7:45 a.m. (2345 GMT Sunday) was magnitude-6.6 and subsequent tremors included a magnitude-5.6.

The quake was shallow, which can be more destructive. The center said it struck about 20 kilometers (12.4 miles) beneath the surface, while the Gansu provincial earthquake administration said it was just 6 kilometers (3.7 miles) deep.

The U.S. Geological Survey measured the magnitude of the initial quake as 5.9 and the depth at 10 kilometers (6 miles).

Initial measurements of an earthquake can vary widely, especially if different monitoring equipment is used.

Dingxi is about 1,233 kilometers (766 miles) west of Beijing.

China’s worst earthquake in recent years was a 7.9-magnitude temblor that struck the southwestern province of Sichuan in 2008, leaving 90,000 people dead or missing.

Indonesia: A 6.1-magnitude earthquake shook northwestern Indonesia on Tuesday, killing 22 people, injuring more than 200 and damaging thousands of homes, authorities said.

The death and destruction was concentrated in the province of Aceh on the island of Sumatra. The two hardest-hit districts were Bener Meriah and Central Aceh, where landslides cut off some major roads, the country’s National Disaster Management Agency said.

People ran out of their homes when the quake struck, and many residents were hesitant to return for fear of aftershocks, said Sutopo Purwo Nugroho, a spokesman for the agency.

In 2004, a 9.1-magnitude underwater earthquake off the coast of Sumatra triggered a tsunami that killed more than 200,000 people in 14 countries. The majority of the deaths were in Indonesia, with Aceh bearing the brunt.

Tuesday’s quake struck at a depth of 10 kilometers (about 6.2 miles) in a mountainous area near Sumatra’s northwestern tip, the U.S. Geological Survey said. It was followed by at least two aftershocks of magnitude 5.2 and 5.3.

Indonesia is on the Ring of Fire, an arc of fault lines circling the Pacific Basin that is prone to frequent earthquakes and volcanic eruptions.

The epicentre of the quake was located at a depth of 385 miles (620 km) in the Sea of Okhotsk, 244 miles (390 km) west of the nearest city, Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, the U.S. Geological Survey said.

The quake was felt in Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, the main city on the Kamchatka peninsula and home to a nuclear submarine base, and on Sakhalin island, where Russia’s largest liquefied natural gas project is located.

Regional emergency authorities issued a tsunami warning for Sakhalin and the Kurile islands, advising residents of dangerous areas to seek high ground, but lifted the warning several minutes later.

Residents of northern Japan felt the quake but there was no tsunami warning from Japan’s meteorological agency.

China: Rescuers and relief teams struggled to rush supplies into the rural hills of China’s Sichuan province Sunday after an earthquake left at least 180 people dead and more than 11,000 injured and prompted frightened survivors to spend a night in cars, tents and makeshift shelters.

The earthquake Saturday morning triggered landslides that cut off roads and disrupted phone and power connections in mountainous Lushan county, in Sichuan’s Ya’an city area, which is further south on the same fault line where a devastating quake wreaked widespread damage across the region five years ago.

Hardest hit were villages further up the valleys, where farmers grow rice, vegetables and corn on terraced plots. Rescuers hiked into neighboring Baoxing county after its roads were cut off, reaching it overnight, state media reported. In Longmen village, authorities said nearly all the buildings had been destroyed in a frightening minute-long shaking by the quake.

In the fog-covered town of Shuangli, corn farmer Zheng Xianlansaid Sunday that she had rushed from the fields back to her home when the quake struck, and cried when she saw that the roof collapsed. She then spent the night outdoors on a worn sofa using a plastic raincoat for cover.

“We don’t earn much money. We don’t know what we will do now,” said 58-year-old Zheng, her eyes welling with tears. “The government only brought one tent for the whole village so far, but that’s not enough for us.”

Along the main roads, ambulances, fire engines and military trucks piled high with supplies waited in long lines, some turning back to try other routes when roads were impassable. Rescuers were forced to dynamite boulders that had fallen across roads, and rains Saturday night slowed rescue work, state media reported.

At the farming village of Longquan, where all the houses were damaged and some destroyed in the community of about 300 people, rescuers had arrived to collect the bodies of three dead, but had not yet provided other services as of Sunday midday, villagers said. Yang Shanqing, 37, said his father, brother and nephew were killed when their house collapsed.

“Now we don’t have any drinking water or power,” Longquan villager Yang Yiyun, 58, told The Associated Press. “All we can do is wait for the government to come and help us out.”

Chinese Premier Li Keqiang had arrived Saturday afternoon by helicopter in Ya’an to direct rescue efforts, the government’s official Xinhua News Agency reported.

“The current priority is to save lives,” Li said, after visiting hospitals, tents and climbing on a pile of rubble to view the devastation, according to Xinhua.

Xinhua, citing the Sichuan province emergency command center, said at least 180 people were killed and 11,227 injured.

The quake — measured by China’s earthquake administration at magnitude 7.0 and by the U.S. Geological Survey at 6.6 — struck shortly after 8 a.m. Saturday, when many people were at home, sleeping or having breakfast.

Tens of thousands of people moved into tents or cars, unable to return home or too afraid to go back as aftershocks continued to jolt the region. In Ya’an, residents sat in groups outside convenience stores watching the news on television sets early Sunday.

As in most natural disasters, the government mobilized thousands of soldiers and others, sending excavators and other heavy machinery as well as tents, blankets and other emergency supplies. Two soldiers died after their vehicle slide off a road and rolled down a cliff, state media reported.