Several villages in Mandya and Ramanagaram districts experienced mild tremors lasting a few seconds on Tuesday morning. No causality or damage to property was reported from any part of the districts, senior police and revenue officials told The Hindu .
Many people residing in Vivekananda Nagar, Pete Beedhi in Channapatna, Kanakapura, Yalachi Palya, Doddagangavadi and some other areas of Ramanagaram district said they experienced tremors at 7.40 a.m.
According to reports, mild tremors were also experienced between 7.40 a.m. and 7.45 a.m. in Besagarahalli, Valagerahalli and Koppa near Maddur, JPM Layout near Halagur in Malavalli, Alakere near Mandya and some areas near Halagur and Kala Muddana Doddi.
In panic, residents of these areas came out of their houses to the streets, grounds and open spaces for safety.
The tremors and the relatively-widespread area of impact have left the Karnataka State Natural Disaster Monitoring Centre (KSNDMC) flummoxed as Mandya and the outskirts of Bengaluru are not known to have an active shear or fault line.
“We have five earthquake monitoring stations in the area, the nearest being at T.G. Halli and KRS Dam. These instruments have not recorded any activity. We even cross-checked our instruments [which have in the past measured tremor intensities of as low as 1.6 on the Richter Scale] and they are working fine,” said S. Jagadish, scientist, KSNDMC.
He said either a quarry blast or reactivating of dormant faultlines could be the reason for the tremor. “This needs deeper study and we can only speculate now. There is a fault line along Arkavathy and Vrishabhavathy rivers, and these could be re-activated slightly,” he said.
At the start of the month, the movement of a lineament (a small fault in the geological landscape) at Chitradurga-Tumakuru district border had caused a minor earthquake measuring 2 on the Richter Scale.
