ISLAMABAD: The Pakistan Meteorological Department (PMD) has denounced predictions on social media regarding the likelihood of any major earthquake in Pakistan, saying “there is no relation between Turkish earthquake and Pakistan, scientifically”.

The PMD said the devastating earthquake with magnitude 7.8 which hit southern Turkey and parts of Syria created panic in Pakistan, with some social media accounts stating that “the earthquake with the same magnitude may occur in Pakistan in a few days”.

The question about the relation with Turkish earthquake is not scientifically correct. There is no direct fault link between Turkey and Pakistan that could trigger faults in Pakistan, Iran, and Afghanistan.

The PMD is running its seismic monitoring network comprising 30 remote monitoring stations and is recording earthquakes occurring within and surrounding areas every day which are of small to medium range magnitudes.

It is worth mentioning that earthquake is purely a natural phenomenon. Pakistan and neighbouring countries such as Iran, Afghanistan, and Tajikistan have experienced many major damaging earthquakes in the past. These countries are earthquake-prone countries and PMD seismic monitoring network is recording more than 100 quakes every day.

The possibility of occurrence of major earthquakes in Pakistan and surrounding countries is always there but when and where or the timeline of happening is beyond the reach of existing technology.

The prevailing method is to find the seismic hazard of the areas by using previous seismic data. This method explores the potential of earthquake fault- seismic hazard assessment is an effort by scientists to quantify seismic hazard and its associated uncertainty in time and space and to provide seismic hazard estimates for seismic risk assessment and other applications but nothing concern with the prediction of earthquakes.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2023