Imphal (The Uttam Hindu): A minor earthquake, measuring 3.6 on the Richter scale, hit Manipur's Bishnupur district on Friday, officials said. A disaster management official said that the quake was felt in Bishnupur district and adjoining areas and added that there has been no immediate report of loss of life or damage to property. According to the National Centre for Seismology (NCS), the quake's depth was 10 km.
Meanwhile, according to the NCS, another quake, measuring 3.5 on the Richter scale, was also felt in Arunachal Pradesh's West Kameng district and adjoining areas on Thursday evening. The earthquake struck at a depth of 5 km from the surface and caused no casualty of life or damage to property. Friday's quake in Manipur is the fifth such tremor in the hilly northeastern states during the past month. On November 12, a light-intensity earthquake, measuring 3.5 on the Richter scale, hit Sikkim's capital Gangtok and adjoining areas of the Himalayan state.
On the same day (November 12), a 3.6 magnitude quake hit Assam's mountainous district Karbi Anglong and it struck at a depth of 20 km from the surface. On October 28, another light-intensity earthquake, measuring 4.3 on the Richter scale, struck Kamle and adjoining areas of Arunachal Pradesh. Its depth was 10 km. At least one state in the mountainous northeastern region experiences earthquakes every week with most tremors measuring 3 to 4 on the Richter scale. Successive earthquakes, mostly mild to moderate, in the mountainous northeastern states, especially in Assam, Mizoram and Manipur, have kept the authorities worried, forcing public and private builders to build quake-proof structures.
Seismologists consider the mountainous northeastern region as the sixth most earthquake-prone belt in the world. In 1950, an earthquake measuring 8.7 on the Richter Scale altered the course of the mighty Brahmaputra river, which passes by the congested Guwahati city, the northeastern region's main commercial hub.