31 May 1935: The Quetta earthquake

Pages from history: this piece tells the story of a day before the launch of Roznama Atemad (October 1970). It has been compiled from available historical sources.

Friday, 31 May 1935. It is about three in the morning and Quetta is fast asleep. Then the ground shakes. The International Seismological Centre’s ISC-GEM catalogue records the time of the shock as 21:32:57 Universal Time on 30 May. In British India’s standard time of the period, that is about 3:03am on 31 May. Later writers have put it at 2:33am in present-day Pakistani time, and the history of the First Queen’s, the British regiment stationed in Quetta, gives 3:40am. Sources differ on the time, not on the outcome: within moments the civil city of Quetta was a heap of rubble.

What happened underground

The ISC-GEM catalogue gives the earthquake a moment magnitude of 7.6 and a depth of 25 kilometres, and places the epicentre 17 kilometres south-west of Kalat. The International Seismological Centre’s own surface-wave measurement is 7.5. In their 2003 review of earthquakes in northern Balochistan, the seismologists Ambraseys and Bilham described it as a left-lateral earthquake of magnitude 7.7. It struck on the same belt as the 1931 Mach earthquake, four years later.

The city, Mastung and Kalat

According to a research article in Dawn (2005), Quetta’s civil lines were completely destroyed. The police lines, the Durbar Hall, the Civil and Mission hospitals and the club all collapsed. Damage in the cantonment was less and was confined to a strip one kilometre wide next to the civil lines. An official communiqué issued from Shimla on 2 June, quoted in the history of the First Queen’s Regiment, said the entire city had been destroyed, a quarter of the cantonment had collapsed, and only 6 of the Royal Air Force’s 27 aircraft remained serviceable.

The destruction was not confined to Quetta. According to the Dawn article, Mastung was flattened, including the Khan’s palace. A large part of Kalat fell. About 100 villages between Quetta and Kalat were destroyed. On 2 June a major aftershock of magnitude 5.8 struck. It did not harm Quetta but caused further damage to Mastung, Mughal Chhar and Kalat.

How many died?

No single final official figure has been agreed to this day. The official communiqué of 2 June 1935 estimated that 20,000 bodies lay under the debris and that about 10,000 Indian residents had survived, 4,000 of them injured. Dawn (2005) put total deaths at about 35,000. These included up to 26,000 in Quetta and its surroundings, 1,736 in Mastung, 1,206 in Sariab and 120 in Kalat town. In the State of Kalat, 2,900 were killed and 5,000 injured. An engineering book (Bangash, 2011) gives a range of 30,000 to 60,000. The historian Daniel Haines writes of about 30,000, and the Indian earthquake engineer Sudhir Jain about 20,000. Until the 2005 Kashmir earthquake, it was the deadliest earthquake in South Asia.

The army’s work

Quetta was a military cantonment, and this proved its greatest help. The First Queen’s battalion was returning from an overnight exercise. It reached the barracks at 6:30am and every available soldier was sent into the city. On the first day came house-to-house searches, taking the injured to hospital and digging graves. The second day was spent searching for survivors, and on the third they were moved to a camp at the racecourse. On 3 June the city was sealed off by a military cordon and martial law was imposed. Looters were to be shot on sight. Evacuation began on the single railway line. By 12 June all British women and children, thousands of homeless people and more than 10,000 injured had been taken out of the city. The British Film Institute holds a silent film of the evacuation, showing trains packed with people and a city of tents on the edge of the town. For gallantry, soldiers were awarded eight Albert Medals and nine Empire Gallantry Medals.

The world that day

• Hollywood: On the same day in the United States, the merger of Twentieth Century Pictures and Fox Film created Twentieth Century Fox.
• Floods in the US: Floods in Colorado, Nebraska and Wyoming killed at least 28 people.
• A day earlier: On 30 May, the baseball legend Babe Ruth played his last game.

What happened next

• 2 June 1935: An aftershock of magnitude 5.8 caused further damage in Mastung and Kalat.
• December 1935: The government decided that Quetta would be rebuilt on the same site, on earthquake-resistant foundations. The initial cost estimate was £6 million.
• 1936: The preliminary report by W D West of the Geological Survey of India was published. The army and the Public Works Department cleared the debris together. A small railway line built for the work ran from 15 March 1936. The clearance was completed in 1937.
• 1937 to 1940: A building code was drawn up for the new city. In 1940 the Government of India published a code and commentary titled “Earthquake Resistant Design of Low Buildings”. It set a seismic coefficient of 0.125g and required concrete bands at plinth, lintel and roof level in brick walls. In 1939 the Geological Survey wrote that Quetta had set a practical example of a building code for northern India.
• 29 September 1941: Another earthquake tested the new buildings. According to a report by the engineer M C Mair, they performed well.
• 2023: The Quetta Metropolitan Corporation allowed tall buildings, with conditions, for the first time since 1935, by amending the Building Code Act of 1937.

Do your elders have a photograph, letter or recollection of the 1935 earthquake? Please send it to us. We will add it to this page with your name.