Met office rules out major quake in near future

Pakistan Meteorological Department on Sunday ruled out any possibility of October-8 like devastating earthquake in near future. However, moderate aftershocks are continuously jolting country's northern areas including one also rattled coastal areas of Karachi on Sunday evening as well.
Speaking at a news conference, Dr Qamar-uz-Zaman Chaudhry Director General of Meteorological Office said the number of aftershocks is decreasing gradually and there is no possibility of another major earthquake in the same region.
He urged the people to remove confusion from their minds, as aftershocks have minimised the chances of any massive earthquake in the near future.
Commenting on rumours about another possible earthquake, Zaman said there is no technology available in the world to specifically predict earthquake.
DG Met Office told reporters that a major earthquake takes decades or even centuries to build up huge amount of energy to occur again adding that such thing has not so far happened in Pakistan's seismic history.
Qamar-uz-Zaman contradicted some reports that epicenter of the aftershocks was moving towards the federal capital. However, he disclosed that one of the aftershocks was felt in Islamabad whose epicenter was "close to the capital".
He said as compared to October-8 earthquake, epicenter of aftershocks has been shifting further away from Islamabad.
Most of the aftershocks, he added were concentrated in an area of 30 to 40 kilometres further north-west of Muzaffarabad and about 120 kilometres of Islamabad which was only 100 kilometres away from Islamabad on October 8.
Director General further informed the newsmen that around 896 aftershocks have been recorded since October, 8 while 25 aftershocks have been recorded during the last 24 hours among which two were significant and their centers were in the area 30-40 km north-west of Muzaffarabad.
He said out of 896 aftershocks recorded so far, the center of only one minor earthquake of magnitude 3.4 was close to Islamabad. Meanwhile he claimed such minor seismic activity occasionally takes place in any part of the country including Islamabad.
About the change in Seismic Zone, he said seismic zoning of any region is mainly based on the past earthquakes and seismic records of that area. After every major earthquake, seismic zoning of the region is normally recomputed and defined and this exercise would be undertaken once the present seismic aftershocks are over, he added.
To a query, Qamar-uz-Zaman said the ongoing aftershocks may continue for another two to three weeks but it will be absolutely on normal pattern as all major earthquakes are followed by the aftershock activity.