Baluchistan earthquake of the 21st October 1909

Abstract

The Baluchistan earthquake of the 21st October 1909. From The Records, Geological Survey of India, Vol. XLI, Part 1, 1911 || The Kirana and other hills in the Jech and Rechna Doabs. From The Records, Geological Survey of India, Vol. XLIII, Part 3, 1913 || The Biana-Lalsot Hills in Eastern Rajputana. From The Records, Geological Survey of India, Vol. XLIII, Part 4, 1917 || The geology of North-Eastern Rajputana and adjacent districts. Memoirs of The Geological Survey of India Volume XLV, Part 1, 1917.

As might be expected in a region of folded mountains of comparatively recent or still continuing uplift, Baluchistan is from time to time visited by earthquakes of greater or less severity. Of those recorded the most important in its topographic effects was that of Sanzal on the 20th December 1892,1 though exceeded in its destruction of life by the subject of the present account.

The Kachhi plain, the locality of this earthquake, is a bay of alluvium (pat) enclosed on three sides by the great flexure of the ranges between the Bugti and Kirthar hills. The railway line between Jacobabad and Sibi traverses this from south to north, crossed at an angle of about 40° by the elongated oval of the epicentral tract.

Unfortunately only two earthquake forms were received (from the Meteorological observers at Quetta and Jacobabad) and five weeks had elapsed before I was tion. able to visit the scene of the calamity, during which time a considerable amount of excavation among the ruins, and even rebuilding, had been done. Outside Baluchistan and the immediately contiguous portion of Sind the shock does not seem to have been felt. My cordial thanks are due to Sir Henry McMahon and Major Jacob of the Baluchistan Government, Mr. H. C. Dobbs and Mr. A. N. L. Cater of the Sibi Agency, Major McConaghey of the Kelat Agency and Mr. W. Beechey, Executive Engineer of the North Western Railway, for much information and assistance.

The data for the present account, apart from those given by the above gentleman, were collected during a fortnight's tour over the area in which damage had been done, an attempt being made to visit and examine every village in it.

xamine every village in it. Owing to the scattered distribution of the population and their comparatively uneducated character, and above all to the total absence of Europeans from the damaged tract, verbal information of the type usually asked for on earthquake forms was found to be of little use, and personal observation of actual wrecking was practically entirely relied on.

rsonal observation of actual wrecking was practically entirely relied on. In the hilly tract surrounding the Kachhi plain, no attempt was made to collect information or draw isoseismals (except in the southern part of the Bugti hills east of Shahpur), as here the population is still scantier and less civilised, and small earthquakes are of such frequent occurrence as to call for little notice from the inhabitants. In the hills no damage was done to property and the shock passed almost unnoticed except in Quetta. No reports were received from any seismological stations.