Yesterday's earthquake in Delhi made everybody feel very scared.

The way everybody felt yesterday earthquake tremors were quite scary and got everybody thinking, what if it's really bad?

As Delhi fall under an active seismic zone both because of the faults around the Delhi NCR region and its proximity to the Himalayas which are seismically active.

Experts at the National Centre for Seismology (NCS) said Delhi is categorised in seismic zone IV and needs to be on alert. It’s, however, also important for people and local authorities to understand that there is no lead time to prepare for an earthquake because they cannot be predicted.

“We cannot forecast earthquakes. There is no technology to do that. It really depends on when accumulated energy is released and at which fault. In the past few years, we saw epicentres to be near Delhi in 2008 and again in 2020. Several weak zones and faults are near Delhi. For example, the Delhi-Haridwar ridge, Mahendragarh-Dehradun subsurface fault, Moradabad fault, Sohna fault, great boundary fault, Delhi-Sargodha ridge, Yamuna River lineament, Ganga River lineament among others,” said JL Gautam, head of office, NCS.

“More importantly, Delhi NCR is located near the Himalayas which is a seismically active zone as we have explained in our report (on Tuesday’s earthquake),” added Gautam.

The Himalayan region is active because of collisional tectonics where Indian plate subducts beneath the Eurasian Plate.

HT had reported on June 4 that Delhi-NCR witnessed at least 14 earthquakes in around two months (March 24 to June 3). A 3- magnitude earthquake was recorded near Gautam Budh Nagar.

“It is noteworthy that prior to the main shock, three prominent events recorded on November 9, 2022 of M 6.3, January 24, 2023 of M 5.8 and February 22, 2023 of M 4.4 within 50 square km of today’s events which were also felt with slight to moderate intensity in Delhi-NCR and others neighbouring states,” NCS’s report on Tuesday’s earthquake said.