Mild tremor felt in parts of Bengaluru, did quarrying activity cause it?

None of the observatories recorded the tremor.

news Tremors

Mild tremors that lasted a few seconds were felt by people living in Rajarajeshwari nagar, Jayanagar, Banshankari and Basaveshwaranagar in Bengaluru at about 8 am on Tuesday. Residents of the area took to social media stating that they experienced tremors in the morning.

However, officials at Karnataka State Natural Disaster Monitoring Centre (KSNDMC) told TNM that none of the observatories recorded the tremor, possibly because it was less than one Richter scale.

The tremor was suspected to have been caused by some local quarry blasts as it was too local and the observatories could not record it.

Jagdish, a scientist at the KSNDMC said that quarrying in Ramanagara might have caused the tremor and that it was highly unlikely that the effect would be felt across Bengaluru.

“The nearest station is in Magadi Road, but it did not record any tremors possibly because the energy of the quarry blast was felt only in a very short distance. Another possibility is local crustal re-adjustments, and in such cases, the signal is bound to decay within short distance before they reach the observatories. Only if they travel to larger distances can we calculate the epicentre," Jagdish said.

Speaking to Deccan Herald, Srinivas Reddy of the Disaster Management Centre said, “Our centres did not showing any such tremor. It happens when the magnitude of earthquake is less than one in Richter scale."

"My aunt saw the fridge door move and the wardrobe door close. So they ran out, they also saw some other neighbours also out of the house," Shifa Kouser, a resident of RT Nagar, told The News Minute.

Heard a strange noise, the ground began to vibrate. It increased, peaked then died away over a few secs. Frightening! #bangalore #earthquake — Sandra Alistair (@sandra_alistair) April 18, 2017

Dear friends,



I got an experience of Earthquake for 2 seconds in this morning around 7:30 in Mudalapalya-Bangalore. — H.Gowda (@hgowda123) April 18, 2017

Anyone else felt the tremor in Bangalore? Experienced a slight earthquake today morning at around 7:30AM. #BangaloreEarthquake — Sangeetha Rajeev (@sancy_sr) April 18, 2017

Earthquake in #Bangalore and I didn't even feel it.

Mostly it was only felt on twitter I guess :P #earthquake April 18, 2017

@tv9kannada we also experienced earthquake in vyalikaval bengaluru around 7.45 am — Spoorthi Gangadhar (@spoorhams) April 18, 2017

Did anyone feel the earthquake #Bengaluru?? Stay safe everyone !! — Rajini Rao (@Rajini_rao63) April 18, 2017