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Strong tremors felt in Kolkata, Dhaka as magnitude 5.9 earthquake strikes Myanmar
Kolkata earthquake: This is also the second earthquake being felt in Bangladesh in less than 24 hours.
An earthquake of magnitude 5.9 struck Myanmar on Tuesday, with strong tremors also felt in Kolkata and various parts of Bangladesh.
According to EMSC data, the earthquake struck 70 miles east of Akyab in Myanmar. Shaking was reported from various parts of West Bengal, including Kolkata and the neighbouring Bangladesh. The quake was at a depth of 10 kilometres (6.21 miles), the German Research Centre for Geosciences (GFZ) said.
A section of residents in high-rise buildings and office employees in Kolkata told news agency PTI that they experienced the aftershocks of the quake, which struck Myanmar at around 9.05 PM and lasted for a few seconds.
This is the third felt earthquake in Myanmar in the last 71 hours, according to EMSC. So far, there is no report of any damage.
The second earthquake felt in Bangladesh on the same day
This is also the second earthquake being felt in Bangladesh in less than 24 hours. Earlier on Tuesday, an earthquake of magnitude 4.1 struck the country, the National Centre for Seismology (NCS) said in a statement.
As per the NCS, the earthquake occurred at a depth of 150km.
It is estimated that an earthquake occurs somewhere on Earth every 30 seconds. But the bulk of those are too weak to be identified.
A magnitude 4.0 earthquake is only equivalent to about 6 tons of TNT explosives, but because the Richter scale is a base-10 logarithmic scale, the amount of energy released increases exponentially: A magnitude 5.0 earthquake is about 200 tons of TNT, 7.0 is 199,000 tons, and 9.0 is 99,000,000 tons of TNT, The Daily Star reported.
