Bangladesh: Tweeting and blogging an earthquake

A moderate earthquake jolted Dhaka city on the 27th of July approximately at 00:51 hours Bangladesh Time (+6 GMT). Russell John reports in his blog:

I was lying on my bed talking to a friend on the phone, and I suddenly felt that the bed was shaking. Within 3 seconds, it stopped. My first impression was that a cat got under my bed and it was shaking it, but then I realised that it's impossible as the bed is way too heavy. (Plus there was no cat, I checked!)

I quickly asked my friends on IRC, and they said they felt it too.

So it was an earthquake for real! Quake in Dhaka at 12:51 AM!

Russell tweeted instantaneously:

Oh my God, I just felt an earthquake!

Within next minutes, tweets started to appear confirming that they also felt the earthquake.

Munaz of Nothing to Lose and Nothing to Gain shared the tweeter feeds of some of his friends:

tweet

Information online was hard to come by (except some Bangla blogs) and everybody was trying to get updates. So Bauani of Information blog contacted U.S. Geological Survey, National Earthquake Information Center and posted the find:

Magnitude: 4.9
Date-Time: Saturday, July 26, 2008 at 18:51:49 UTC
Location: 24.773°N, 90.480°E
Depth: 5.2 km (3.2 miles) (poorly constrained)
Region: BANGLADESH

He was also posting the updates as and when available.

Apparently no casualties were reported but it rattled the affected people of Dhaka, a populous mega city.

Rumi of In The Middle of Nowhere writes:

map
Map of all the major and minor tectonic plates of the world

If you can locate Bangladesh in the world map, you will see two plate boundaries, i.e. two fault lines cross Bangladesh….many scientists have been warning about the probability of a devastating 8-9 Richter scale catastrophic earthquake in the northeastern and southeastern parts of Bangladesh.

So, (a) major earthquake is also possible in Bangladesh. Are we ready?

3 comments

  • গতকালই সময় হয়েছে ওদের তাড়াবার ।

    আণুবীক্ষণিক চোখ

    আঠারো মাসের আয়নায় ওদের চেহারা আজ পরিস্কার,
    তত্ববধায়ক নয় ওরা, তাবেদার আইএমএফ,ওয়ার্ল্ড ব্যাংক আর ইন্ডিয়ার।

    তত্ববধায়ক নয় ওরা, অদক্ষ অক্ষম তাবেদার,
    দেশের অর্থনীতি করেছে সাবাড়, বাড়িয়েছে দারিদ্র, হতাশা আর হাহাকার ।

    তত্ববধায়ক নয় ওরা, প্রতারক ,
    স্বাধীন বিচার ব্যবস্হার কথা বলে আর নিয়ণ্ত্রণ করে বিচারক ।

    তত্ববধায়ক নয় ওরা, অত্যাচারী ,
    খালি করেছে বহুজনের ভাতের হাড়ি।
    জেলখানাকে বানিয়েছে বহু নির্দোষ মানুষের বাড়ী।

    তত্ববধায়ক নয় ওরা, অদক্ষ অক্ষম তাবেদার,
    আঠারো মাসেও তাই পারে নাই জরুরী অবস্হা সাড়াবার ,
    গতকালই সময় হয়েছে ওদের তাড়াবার ।

  • […] with Global Voices as a volunteer author since 2005. Memorable posts by Rezwan include a report on Twittering' an earthquake in Bangladesh, and a story of colorful but expensive Bangladeshi weddings. He replaces the illustrious Neha […]

  • […] This post was mentioned on Global Voices on July 29th. If you liked this post, then you also might like…Bangladesh Jindabad!North Bengal […]

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