Powerful earthquake strikes Pakistan, raises new island

By Deborah Byrd in
Blogs | Earth | Human World on Sep 24, 2013

Earthquake in Pakistan, September 24, 2013 via USGS

Hundreds are dead following a large quake that struck in a mountainous region of Pakistan. A new island has risen off Pakistan’s coast.

September 25, 2013, 2 a.m. CDT (0700 UTC). The BBC is now reporting that at least 238 people died in a mountainous region of southwest Pakistan on Tuesday, when a powerful 7.7-magnitude earthquake struck there. The earthquake struck in Pakistan’s Balochistan region, its largest but least populated province. The quake was felt in the Indian capital Delhi, where some buildings shook. It caused a new island to rise from the sea, just off the Pakistan’s southern coast.

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A new island, created in what one scientist called a “mud volcano,” has risen from the sea off the coast of Pakistan, following the September 24, 2013 earthquake there. Image via DieWelt.

Not surprisingly, people are already out walking on the new island, as this BBC World News Facebook image shows. The BBC reports that there is already rubbish on the island from people who have begun visiting it.

Pakistan earthquake September 24, 2013 via USGS

Television stations in the region were the first to report a small, mountain-like island. It is about 60 to 70 feet (18 to 21 meters) high, up to 300 feet wide and up to 120 feet long, according to Times of India, which also said it sits about 200 meters away from the coast. NBCNews.com reports that John Armbruster, a seismologist at the Lamont Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University, called the new island a “mud volcano.” It is apparently a jet of mud, sand and water that gushed to the sea surface following the earthquake. Nidhi Subbaraman of NBCNews.com wrote:

The shifting sand layers are compacted and pressurize the water, which gushed upwards, carrying mud and sand along with it.

This ‘liquefaction’ of sand and mud layers take place after any earthquake, but these sudden islands are usually spotted after strong earthquakes, at least 7- or 8-magnitude events.

View larger. | New islands do rise from the sea floor on occasion. Image on left shows an island that appeared on November 26, 2010, also formed by a mud volcano, off Balochistan, Pakistan. Image on right shows the same spot about a year earlier. Images via NASA Earth Observatory

Earth is dynamic, and new islands do sometimes appear, often to slip beneath the waves again some time later. The image above is from 2010, when an island arose from the Arabian Sea off the southern coast of Pakistan. Older residents of the coastal town of Gwadar, Pakistan told NBCNews.com that a 1968 earthquake produced an island that stayed for one year and then vanished. Still earlier, an earthquake in this same region in the 1940s produced an island that was solid enough for people to walk on, but it washed away within weeks.

Details of the quake from the USGS are below:

Event Time:

• 2013-09-24 11:29:48 UTC
• 2013-09-24 16:29:48 UTC+05:00 at epicenter

Location: 27.016°N 65.547°E

Depth=15.0km (9.3mi)

Nearby Cities:

• 69km (43mi) NNE of Awaran, Pakistan
•  115km (71mi) NW of Bela, Pakistan
• 171km (106mi) NW of Uthal, Pakistan
• 174km (108mi) S of Kharan, Pakistan
• 795km (494mi) ENE of Muscat, Oman

Pakistan earthquake zone map, via Wikimedia Commons. The September 24, 2013 earthquake took place 116 km (72 m) northwest of Bela on this map, which is in the blue zone (minor to moderate damage). USGS issued a red alert for estimated fatalities and orange alert for estimated economic losses for this quake. Nearly a day after the quake occurred, 238 deaths had been reported.

Large earthquakes are relatively common in Pakistan in contrast to other part of the world. Check out this list of Pakistan earthquakes from Wikipedia, and note that today’s earthquake is at least the third one since 2005 that measures 7.2 or greater on the Richter Scale. No fewer than four major tectonic plates (Arabia, Eurasia, India, and Africa) and one smaller tectonic block (Anatolia) are responsible for seismicity and tectonics in the Middle East and surrounding region, according to the USGS.

Bottom line: A large and powerful earthquake struck on September 24, 2013 in a remote, mountainous region of Pakistan. The quake measured 7.7 on the Richter Scale; that is a very large earthquake. It struck in Pakistan’s Balochistan region, its largest but least populated province. Reports are now suggesting that at least 238 people were killed in the quake. A new island formed from a “mud volcano” on the sea floor following the quake, according to scientists at the Lamont Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University.

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Deborah Byrd

Deborah Byrd is Founder and President of EarthSky, which she created in 1991. EarthSky is a digital publisher that brings science and nature to millions of people around the world. Byrd also produced the EarthSky radio series from 1991 to 2013. She has won a galaxy of awards from the broadcasting and science communities, including having an asteroid named 3505 Byrd in her honor. Besides blogging, Byrd is Editor-in-Chief of EarthSky.org: Science News, Great Photos, Sky Alerts. She is executive producer of a video series in Spanish - interviews with scientists - that airs on Univision. A science communicator and educator for 37 years, Byrd believes in science as a force for good in the world and as a vital tool for the 21st century. Astrophysics, the night sky and imagining space travel remain among her most enduring lifelong passions.