Sunday’s earthquake was third to hit Delhi in a month, with same epicentre

Two low-intensity earthquakes had struck Delhi on April 12 and 13 at shallow depths.

An earthquake of 3.4 magnitude struck Delhi on Sunday afternoon with its epicentre at Sonia Vihar. This is the third earthquake to hit Delhi in about a month.

People gather outside their houses after a 3.5-magnitude earthquake, near Mandi House in New Delhi on April 12.(Arvind Yadav/HT Photo)

On April 12, a 3.5-magnitude quake had struck Delhi and its neighbouring region. Interestingly, the epicentre of that earthquake was also near Sonia Vihar in North-East Delhi (near Wazirabad) at almost the same location.

According to officials at the National Centre for Seismology (NCS) helpline, people had called and reported tremors from near the epicentre on Sunday. The quake occurred at 1.45 pm at a depth of five kilometres, said the NCS.

The location coordinates of the event is latitude 28.7 N and longitude 77.2 E. Seismologists said it’s too early to say why there is another earthquake with the same epicentre.

“There are many faults in and around Delhi. There is the Sohna fault, Mathura and Mahendergarh faults which can contribute to earthquakes. There are several lineaments (an expression of an underlying geological structure such as a fracture) also. One lineament could have activated other lineaments. But we need to refine our recordings and findings to see what happened,” said AP Pandey, seismologist at NCS.

The location coordinates according to NCS for the previous earthquake was also latitude 28.7 north and longitude 77.2 east, and the depth was 6.5 kilometres.

On April 13, another low-intensity earthquake of magnitude 2.7 shook parts of Delhi. The quake occurred at 1.26 pm at a shallow depth of 5 kilometre in North-East Delhi (near Wazirabad).

It’s not unusual for epicentre of these relatively small earthquakes to be in Delhi and neighbouring Haryana, seismologists said. But in April the experience was much more intense for people in Delhi because of less noise associated with traffic movement due to the ongoing Covid-19 lockdown.

Of the seismic zones in India, Delhi falls under the fourth-highest zone, making it vulnerable to earthquakes. But it is rare that Delhi has been the epicentre of a quake. It, however, experiences tremors when a quake hits regions as far as central Asia or the Himalayan ranges, known to be a high-seismic zone.

An earthquake of magnitude 2.8 had hit the national capital in 2004. Another quake of magnitude 3.4 was recorded in the city in 2001.