A tremor of 5.7 magnitude was recorded at 1.09 a.m. on Tuesday woke up people in Assam, who had gone to bed in panic after experiencing a 6.2 magnitude earthquake on Monday afternoon.
Monday’s afternoon’s tremor quickly followed by the sixth tremor in past 42 days prompted the State Disaster Management Authority (SDM) on Tuesday to ask the Guwahati Metropolitan Development Authority (GMDA) and Guwahati Municipal Corporation (GMC) to deploy engineers to identify all vulnerable buildings in the city and instructed the Kamrup (Metropolitan) district administration to take necessary steps to ensure safety of the occupants of such buildings accordingly. Panic gripped residents of multi-storeyed buildings in the city following cracks in some building after Monday’s earthquake.
The SDM also asked all government departments to gear up and activate their contingency plan. The instructions were issued after a review meeting taken by State Revenue Minister Bhumidhar Barman. Although no casualty or injury was reported in Assam, Monday’s earthquake claimed 11 lives in Bhutan including four road construction workers from lower Assam.
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V.K. Pipersenia, Principal Secretary, Revenue and Disaster Management, told The Hindu that all government departments were directed to activate their contingency