Earthquake in Uzbekistan: review, features, history and interesting facts

Are you a light sleeper? And on New Year's Eve? Imagine that you were awakened by the noise of crumbling plaster, the squeaking of a shaking chandelier, the ringing of Christmas toys ... You wake up and see that the floor beneath you is shaking. And outside the window the birds scream anxiously. This is not a shot from a fantastic film. This is already a frequent reality - an earthquake in Uzbekistan. For the full two months of this year, there were nine of them in the country. And they began literally from the first of January. Of course, none of the recent earthquakes was devastating, no one was hurt. But the trend is alarming. What are the living minerals in you? And what lesson did humanity have to learn after the famous Tashkent earthquake of 1966? This article will be devoted to our article.

Why is Uzbekistan highly seismic?

A fifth of the territory of this Central Asian country is made up of mountains. They refer to the new Alpine folding. The formation of the mountains has not yet been completed. The layers of the earth's crust are in motion. Although magma does not find an outlet in eruptions of volcanoes, it makes itself felt. This is the reason for frequent earthquakes in Uzbekistan. Sometimes the epicenter of tremors was in the territory of the country, but it happened that it was located in neighboring Afghanistan. If we follow the history of monitoring earthquakes, we will see that Uzbekistan often became an arena of tragic cataclysms. Only in the twentieth century there were several destructive tremors. Tashkent actually experienced three strong earthquakes - in 1866, 1868 and exactly one hundred years after the first - in April 1966. In Fergana underground subsurface raged in 1823, and in Andijan - in 1889 and 1902.

History: twenty years before Chernobyl

Perhaps April 26 is a fateful date for the USSR. But on this day of 1966, at half past five in the morning, when Tashkent was still sleeping peacefully, an earthquake occurred in Uzbekistan. Its magnitude was relatively small - only five points on the Richter scale. But since the epicenter of the earthquake was not deep, only three to five kilometers from the surface, it caused enormous destruction. On the same morning, the shooting of the completely destroyed Tashkent occupied the front pages of newspapers, were broadcast from TV news screens. L. Brezhnev and A. Kosygin with his entourage arrived in Uzbekistan.

Surprisingly, for all the devastation of the earthquake, only eight people died directly from him. This is because seismic shocks were vertical, not horizontal. With such fluctuations, there is a collapse of high-rise buildings, which at that time in the capital of Uzbekistan simply did not exist. The city was mostly one-story. Most injuries people received from falling shingles, bricks, pieces of plaster.

Consequences of the earthquake

The central part of Tashkent in late April 1966 reminded Dresden after bombing. All the forces of the USSR were abandoned to restore the city. All the republics of the Soviet Union contributed to the rise of Tashkent from the ruins. It was decided not to repair the old one-story adobe houses, from which the capital of Uzbekistan was before the disaster. The area of these residential quarters was completely cleaned, and soon new high-rise buildings appeared in their place. The streets and avenues of the transformed Tashkent began to bear the names of the cities that helped him in difficult times. For three and a half years the capital of Uzbekistan was completely rebuilt. But did the construction workers of high-rise buildings pay attention to the advice of seismologists? After all, then, before the leadership of the Soviet Union was the issue of rapid deployment of the population of the city of a million people - people who were left homeless because of the unrest of the elements.

Stormy bowels continue to harvest human harvest

The next tragic earthquake in Uzbekistan occurred on July 21, 2011. The epicenter of seismic shocks was located forty kilometers from Fergana. An earthquake of magnitude six was observed not only in Uzbekistan, but also in neighboring Kyrgyzstan. But there, fortunately, there were no casualties, although houses were destroyed. But in Uzbekistan, thirteen people became a victim of the earthquake. More than eighty citizens were injured due to caving in. In Tashkent, the tremors were felt with power five points.

The earthquake of 2011 and to other cities of the republic have been dashed. In Jizzakh and Termez, the shocks were four points, and in Samarkand - three. Great victims were avoided only because the epicenter of the earthquake was located deep - twelve kilometers from the surface. The element was not insidious: nature warned people about the approaching catastrophe. On the seventeenth of July, seismologists recorded a small earthquake. But no one attached importance to this fact.

The last earthquakes in Uzbekistan

Seismological activity has intensified since December last year. True, ordinary people noticed this only on the night of the twenty-sixth. Immediately after midnight, there were several small but perceptible jolts that lasted more than a minute. The next morning the country's seismic service reported that an earthquake occurred in Afghanistan, in the Hindu Kush mountains. Its magnitude in the epicenter was six points on the Richter scale. But because of the distance of more than five hundred kilometers, the inhabitants of Uzbekistan felt it as a push with strength of two points. It was only the first alarm bell. Since January 1 this year, earthquakes have increased in Uzbekistan. All of them are unobtrusive and, of course, not destructive. Tosses the dishes in the sideboards, the chandelier swings. But is it worth while to calm down?

Will the next earthquake in Uzbekistan be deadly?

The low power of the tremors, which were recorded by seismologists this year, should not lead us astray. The thing is that the epicenters of all nine earthquakes were far from Tashkent. They passed on the territory of either Afghanistan or Kyrgyzstan. And if the epicenter was located in Uzbekistan, then at great depth. Therefore, weak shocks, fixed by seismographs, reached the surface. Or, in rare cases, they were felt by people. But does this mean that the next earthquake in Uzbekistan will also pass unnoticed? Seismologists say that the earth's interior in the Hindu Kush mountains is now experiencing a period of special activity. And the deep valleys of the republic are an excellent springboard, where the elements can show all their might.

What to do?

This question is by no means idle. After all, one of the countries for which seismic forecast is vital is Uzbekistan. There were a lot of earthquakes, and recently their number has increased dramatically. One should listen to the opinion of scientists about the activity of the earth's interior. Rescue services for people in emergency circumstances must be fully prepared. Only in this case the victims will be avoided.