NEW DELHI: The risk of a tsunami, generated by an earthquake in the Arabian Sea along the Makran fault, is being taken seriously by the National Institute of Disaster Management.
With Mumbai and the entire Gujarat coast at risk from such a tsunami, efforts are on to have an early warning system in place as soon as possible.
According to a home ministry official involved in disaster management, an earthquake on the faultline which is just south of Pakistan could generate a tsunami that would hit Karachi almost immediately. The Gujarat coast may get a 15 minute warning, while in Mumbai, residents would get a warning an hour in advance.
But what complicates matters, especially for Mumbai, is that the land is flat and waves may go inland a long way. The option of escaping by running to high ground would not be available, says Professor Santosh Kumar of the National Institute of Disaster Management.
Past tsunamis in the region are not well documented creating a lack of information. The last tsunami was generated by an earthquake on November 28, 1945, just off Balochistan. That caused tsunami waves as high as 11m in the Kutch region and hit Mumbai as well, causing 4,000 deaths.
According to Kumar, though the existence of the faultline was known, the realisation of what it can lead to has only hit now. Even after the 2004 tsunami, Indo-Canadian tsunami expert Tad Murthy had predicted a tsunami, based on the possibility that tsunamis in the region follow a 60-year cycle. The threat had been dismissed then by scientists at the National Geophysical Research Institute.
However, there is no reason to panic. Not all under-water earthquakes cause tsunamis. For that, there has to be vertical displacement of the body of water above the quake region.
