BENGALURU: While there have been 51 earthquakes recorded in Karnataka since 2010, 16 of them have occurred in the last five weeks alone —which is 30 per cent of the tremors occurring since the first week of September. More worryingly, all these 16 tremors have happened mainly in Vijayapura and Kalaburagi districts.
Experts have warned that such a high frequency of continuous tremors in one particular region (Vijayapura and Kalaburagi are in the same region of North Karnataka) could be a strong indication of a much bigger quake in the near future.
According to the data available with TNIE, 51 micro tremors have been recorded by Karnataka State Natural Disaster Monitoring Centre’s (KSNDMC) permanent Seismic Monitoring Stations Networks. All these have recorded magnitudes between 0.7 to 4.1. While in 2010, 27 of the 51 were recorded — which is highest frequency of tremors in the last 11 years — these were throughout that year. But this year, between Septe ber 4, 2021 and October 11, 2021, 16 tremors were recorded that too mainly in Vijayapura and Kalaburagi, with Hassan recording one event.
Since 2018, only one micro tremor was recorded each year till 2020, after which there was a lull before 16 occurred in five weeks between September 4 and October 11. Experts have speculated that this could be due to heavy rains over the last few days in these regions that could have washed the clay bed which is in between two layers of rock. The vacuum created between these layers might have resulted in tremors, they said.