Not surprisingly, Kohima has been featured among the eight new cities and towns added to a government list of urban areas vulnerable to earthquakes of “very severe intensity”.
In all, 81 new towns and cities were added to a list of areas prone to earthquakes, bringing the total to 107, according to government data released on March 16, 2016.
In 2002, only Guwahati and Srinagar were marked in what is called a “very severe intensity zone”, or zone V, the highest-risk seismic zone. The recent additions are Jorhat, Sadiya and Tezpur in Assam, Bhuj in Gujarat, Darbhanga in Bihar, Imphal in Manipur, Kohima in Nagaland and Mandi in Himachal. The entire north-east region lies in seismic zone V.
The panic spread by this week’s earthquakes is a continuing warning that India has vast areas of vulnerability.
Nearly 60 per cent of the sub-continental landmass is vulnerable to earthquakes, IndiaSpend had reported in 2015, noting 38 earthquake prone cities (with over half a million population in seismic zones III, IV and V), based on 2002 data from the National Disaster Management Authority.
A big Himalayan earthquake-more than 500 years overdue-is expected, although no one can predict when this might be, IndiaSpend had reported.
