Location of epicentre

• An earthquake of magnitude 6.4 on the Richter scale hit Assam around 8 am on Wednesday.
• The primary earthquake had its epicentre at latitude 26.690 N and longitude 92.360 E, about 80 km northeast of Guwahati, and a focal depth of 17 km, the National Centre for Seismology (NCS) said.

The faultline

• The preliminary analysis shows that the events are located near to Kopili Fault closer to Himalayan Frontal Thrust (HFT).
• The Kopili Fault is a 300-km northwest-southeast trending fault from the Bhutan Himalaya to the Burmese arc.
• The fault is a fracture along which the blocks of crust on either side have moved relative to one another parallel to the fracture.
• The area is seismically very active falling in the highest Seismic Hazard zone V associated with collisional tectonics where Indian plate sub-ducts beneath the Eurasian Plate the NCS report said.
• HFT, also known as the Main Frontal Thrust (MFT), is a geological fault along the boundary of the Indian and Eurasian tectonic plates.

Need for earthquake preparedness

• The Northeast is located in the highest seismological zone, so we must have constant earthquake preparedness at all levels.
• Continuous tectonic stress keeps building up particularly along the faultlines.
• Today’s earthquake was an instance of accumulated stress release — probably, stress was constrained for a fairly long time at this epicentre, and hence the release was of relatively higher intensity.

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