An Afghan girl and her kids stroll amid particles after a robust earthquake struck Herat, Afghanistan on October 15, 2023.
| Photo Credit: AP/PTI
The story to this point: An earthquake of magnitude 6.3 struck Western Afghanistan on October 15, barely just a few days after a number of earthquakes of comparable power killed at the least a thousand individuals in the Herat province. Multiple earthquakes have destroyed complete villages in the nation.
Afghanistan’s Taliban-run authorities has put out conflicting numbers on the dying toll from the October 11 quake, information company Reuters reported. On Friday, the catastrophe administration ministry revised downwards the dying toll from a number of earthquakes to round 1,000 from an earlier determine of over 2,400. The U.N.’s humanitarian workplace had stated on Tuesday that round 1,300 individuals had died, the report added.
A turbulent current historical past of earthquakes in Afghanistan
Afghanistan has confronted widespread destruction from intense earthquakes over time. In June 2022, greater than 1,000 individuals had been killed when an earthquake of magnitude 6.1 struck Khost and Paktika provinces. In 2015, a serious earthquake that struck the nation’s northeast killed over 200 individuals in Afghanistan and neighbouring northern Pakistan. A 6.1-magnitude earthquake in 2002 killed about 1,000 individuals in northern Afghanistan. In 1998, one other earthquake and subsequent tremors in northeast Afghanistan killed at the least 4,500 individuals.
Anatomy of an earthquake
The earth is made up of chunks of stable rocks referred to as tectonic plates. Discontinuities in these rock lots, alongside which they’ve moved, are referred to as fault traces. These fractures are a results of tectonic forces and stress that builds up in the earth’s lithosphere, inflicting the rocks to interrupt and slip.
An earthquake happens when blocks of lithosphere out of the blue slip previous each other, releasing vitality and sending seismic waves via the bottom.
The floor the place the lithosphere chunks slip turns into a fault aircraft. The level throughout the earth the place the fault rupture begins and produces an earthquake is known as the main focus or the hypocentre. The level on the floor of the earth instantly above it’s referred to as the epicentre.
Tectonic plates are sluggish shifting however are all the time in movement, largely as a result of warmth vitality generated contained in the earth. The edges of those plates are referred to as plate boundaries and include faults— that is the place most earthquakes happen.
Why do frequent earthquakes happen in Afghanistan?
Afghanistan is situated over a number of fault traces in the area the place the Indian and the Eurasian tectonic plates meet. These plates collide typically, resulting in important tectonic exercise in the area.
Afghanistan is situated on the Eurasian plate. Towards western Afghanistan, the Arabian plate subducts northward below Eurasia, and in the direction of jap Afghanistan the Indian plate does the identical. In southern Afghanistan, the Arabian and Indian plates adjoin and each subduct northward below the Eurasian plate.
The Hindu Kush mountain vary and the Pamir Knot are geologically complicated areas the place tectonic plates meet. The collision and convergence of the Indian Plate and the Eurasian Plate end result in the folding and faulting of the Earth’s crust. This geological complexity contributes to the incidence of earthquakes in the area.
The ongoing northward motion of the Indian Plate in the direction of the Eurasian Plate additionally outcomes in compression, resulting in the uplift of the Himalayas and the transmission of tectonic stress throughout the whole area, together with Afghanistan. The compression causes the crust to deform, and creates faults and fractures that may slip and generate earthquakes. These interactions at plate boundaries generate important tectonic stresses and end result in earthquakes.
Afghanistan can be crisscrossed by varied energetic fault methods just like the Chaman Fault and the Main Pamir Thrust. These faults are the sources of many earthquakes in the area.
- Afghanistan has confronted widespread destruction from intense earthquakes over time.
- Afghanistan is situated over a number of fault traces in the area over the realm the place the Indian and the Eurasian tectonic plates meet. These plates collide typically, resulting in important tectonic exercise in the area.
- Afghanistan’s Taliban-run authorities has put out conflicting numbers on the dying toll from the October 11 quake, information company Reuters reported.
