A strong earthquake that struck the remote area of Awaran, in south-west Pakistan On Tuesday, September 24, has left at least 328 people destroying entire villages in its wake. Rescue teams were initially focused on the areas of the Khuzdar and Awaran districts where there were the most fatalities due to hundreds of collapsed mud-homes. Local hospitals are running out of food and medicine as doctors and rescue teams are struggling to reach survivors. The number of fatalities is likely to rise as teams continue searching. Measuring at 7.7 on the Richter scale, the earthquake created a new island roughly five kilometres off the southern coast of Pakistan in the Arabian Sea. Andrew Miall, a geology professor at the University of Toronto says that although it is not a common way for an island to occur, that vertical movement of the Earth’s crust is very common and that the crust in this area was close enough to the surface of the water that is was pushed high enough to succeed the ocean’s surface. Muhammed Arshad, a hydrographer with the Pakistan navy, estimates that the sea in that area is only about six to seven metres deep. Read more http://www.brockpress.com/2013/10/powerful-earthquake-creates-new-island-off-the-shore-of-pakistan/
