The National Seismic Monitoring Center’s (NSMC) director, Zahid Rafi, has refuted recent social media speculations that an earthquake is about to strike Pakistan.
Rafi claimed that earthquakes are a natural occurrence and cannot be anticipated with certainty in an interview with a local media station. He continued by saying that the devastation caused by recent earthquakes in Turkey could have been avoided if earthquakes could be predicted. Rafi further mentioned that Pakistan regularly experiences little earthquakes and that this trend will continue.
He emphasised that there is no scientific evidence to back the stories and made clear that there are no similarities between the fault lines in Pakistan and Turkey in an effort to allay public concerns. In conclusion, Rafi disagreed with forecasts that an enormous earthquake comparable to those that shook Turkey and Syria will soon occur in Pakistan.
The Pakistan Meteorological Department (PMD) afterwards released a thorough statement in which it claimed that Pakistan was in panic as a result of the severe earthquakes in Turkey.
However, the assertion claims that “The PMD was running its own seismic monitoring network with 30 remote monitoring stations, recording daily earthquakes occurring in and around the monitored locations. These quakes range in magnitude from small to medium, and experts claim that earthquakes are a completely normal occurrence “again.
“Pakistan and its neighbouring countries, notably Iran, Afghanistan, and Tajikistan, have experienced a number of significant damaging earthquakes in the past. In these earthquake-prone countries, the PMD seismic monitoring network is recording more than 100 earthquakes every day.
It also made clear that the most common approach to examining an earthquake fault’s potential involves determining the seismic risk of the surrounding areas using historical seismic data.
Seismic hazard assessment is an endeavour by earth scientists to quantify seismic risk and its associated uncertainty in time and space and to give seismic hazard estimates for seismic risk assessment and other uses, but it has nothing to do with earthquake prediction.
On social media, there have been several forecasts about a significant earthquake that could occur in Pakistan that were made by a Dutch researcher. The video was posted by him to Twitter, where it quickly became viral among online users.
Larger seismic activity may occur from 4 to 6 February, most likely up to mid or high 6 magnitude. There is a slight possibility of a larger seismic event around 4 February.https://t.co/75I3PjAarX
— SSGEOS (@ssgeos) February 2, 2023
