Indian earth science scientists have deduced that tsunamis can hit the Indian coast only when a big earthquake occurs on the sea bed in the 4,000 km Java-Sumatra region of the Indian Ocean on the east coast and the Makran region in the north Arabian Sea on the west coast.
“Unlike the Pacific Ocean, where there are regular earthquakes on the sea bed with a magnitude of 7 or more on Richter Scale, big earthquakes are likely to occur in these two regions of the Indian Ocean and Arabian Sea, on either side of the Indian sea coasts, which could cause tsunamis,” said former secretary of the Department of Ocean Development and ex-director of National Geophysical Research Institute (NGRI) Harsh K. Gupta on Wednesday.
Addressing top scientists, technologists and researchers at the Eighth National Conference of Ocean Society of India (OSICON 23) under way at the Indian National Centre for Ocean Services Information (INCOIS) here till August 25, the top scientist said that the December 2004 tsunami, which hit the Indian coast due to an earthquake of the magnitude of 9.2, was way bigger than the Hiroshima atom bomb on the Sumatra-Andamans belt.
