24 September 2013: The Awaran earthquake

Pages from history: This article has been compiled from available official, scholarly and press sources. The 25 September 2013 issue of Roznama Atemad is not available to us in scanned form.

Tuesday, 24 September 2013. It is 4.29pm. The ground shakes in the mud-house settlements of Awaran. According to Dawn, the tremors last about a minute in several parts of the province, including Quetta. The International Seismological Centre (ISC) records the time as 11:29:48 Universal Time, the epicentre at 26.91 degrees north and 65.53 degrees east, and the depth at about 15 kilometres. The Met Office put the magnitude at 7.7, and the ISC bulletin gives a moment magnitude of 7.76. In Karachi and Hyderabad, people left their offices and came out onto the pavements. According to AFP, the tremors reached New Delhi and Dubai.

What happened underground

In 2014, seismologists Jean-Philippe Avouac and colleagues, analysing satellite images and seismic waves, said the rupture began south of the Chaman fault and ran south-west along the Hoshab fault, opposite the Kech Band. A rupture about 200 kilometres long opened on the surface, and the ground slipped by up to about ten metres. Surprisingly, the Hoshab fault is essentially a thrust fault, yet that day the movement was almost entirely horizontal.

Awaran and Kech

According to Dawn, on the first night the provincial Home Secretary, Asad Gilani, confirmed 208 deaths and 350 injured. Chief Secretary Babar Yaqoob Fateh Muhammad said that more than 80 per cent of the mud houses in Awaran had collapsed or been badly damaged. An emergency was declared in Awaran and five other districts. A government spokesman named the affected districts as Kech, Gwadar, Khuzdar, Chagai, Awaran and Panjgur. Communications and roads were cut off.

By 27 September, Dawn reported 359 deaths and 765 injured. According to official sources, about 21,000 families in Awaran and Kech were homeless, 300,000 people were affected, and an area of 40,000 square kilometres was hit. According to The Nation, Mashkay Assistant Commissioner Mir Naseer Ahmed Musiani said more than 200 people died in Mashkay alone and natural springs dried up. The World Health Organization (WHO) health situation report of 3 October 2013, citing PDMA Balochistan, gave official figures of 376 deaths (Awaran 330, Kech 46) and 834 injured. In November, a Dawn special report put the total deaths at 386. According to NDMA figures of 21 October, 32,638 houses were badly damaged and 14,118 partially destroyed. An assessment by 11 non-governmental organisations found that 80 per cent of houses in 296 villages were destroyed or damaged.

A new island off Gwadar

About 400 kilometres from the epicentre, a mound rose from the sea off the Gwadar coast. Dr Asif Inam of the National Institute of Oceanography (NIO) told Dawn that the island appeared “immediately after the earthquake”. His initial estimate was that it was about 200 metres long and 20 metres high, roughly 1.5 kilometres from the shore. When a team led by NIO expert Muhammad Danish held a match to bubbles rising from the surface, they caught fire. He said it was methane gas. Experts called it a “mud volcano” that would be broken up by the waves. According to AFP, similar islands had also formed off Gwadar after the 1945 Makran earthquake. According to the US space agency NASA, it was named “Zalzala Koh”. According to Dawn, local people called it “Zalzala island”. Local marine biologist Abdul Rahim Baloch told Dawn in December 2016 that the island had disappeared.

The second tremor on 28 September

On Saturday, 28 September, at 12.34pm Pakistan time, the ground shook again in the same area. According to the ISC bulletin, its magnitude was 6.8 and its epicentre about 30 kilometres north of the first quake. According to Dawn, the Mashkay area was badly hit by both earthquakes. We found no official figure for deaths from this tremor alone in the sources available to us. In November, Dawn put the combined deaths from both earthquakes at about 400.

Relief

The province itself sent the first relief. According to Dawn, the provincial government dispatched 1,000 tents, 500 ration bags, medicines and 15 ambulances, and the PDMA sent 13 trucks. The army provided two helicopters, and the army and the Frontier Corps carried out relief work. Iran and Turkey offered assistance. According to The Nation, three days later relief teams had still not reached remote villages.

In the world that day

• New York: The general debate of the 68th session of the United Nations General Assembly began.

What happened next

• 25 September 2013: News of the new island off Gwadar.
• 28 September 2013: A second earthquake of magnitude 6.8; Mashkay hit again.
• 21 October 2013: According to NDMA, 32,638 houses badly damaged and 14,118 partially destroyed.
• November 2013: According to Dawn, the government plan: initial rehabilitation first, then two to three years of comprehensive reconstruction, with the army, the provincial government and NDMA working together.
• December 2016: According to Dawn, Gwadar’s “Zalzala island” disappeared.

Do you have a copy of Roznama Atemad from September 2013, or any photograph or memory from that time of Awaran, Mashkay or the island off Gwadar? Please send it to us. We will add it to this page with your name.