Mild tremors stir panic in southern Karnataka

Bengaluru, April 19 (IANS) Mild tremors on early Tuesday stirred panic across southern Karnataka, forcing people to rush out of houses into open spaces for safety.

"Tremors were reported but the Richter scale did not record them as they were mild," Karnataka State Natural Disaster Monitoring Centre Director G.S. Srinivas Reddy told IANS.

Many people on the outskirts of Bengaluru, Kollegal, Mandya, Ramanagara and Tumakuru districts in the state's southern region said that they felt the tremors between 7:40-7:45 a.m.

"The moment we felt the tremors, we rushed out of our house and alerted neighbours too to come out," said Jinesh Shetty, a resident of Kudlu Gate on the city's southern outskirts.

Though the state-run centre received calls from the affected people living in places beyond Bengaluru, Reddy said none of the five earthquake monitoring stations in the region recorded the tremors, as they were less than 1.5 magnitude on the Richter scale.

"As mild tremors are not noticed generally, some pepole would have felt them as they were at home when they occurred," added Reddy.

In the country's seismic map, Bengaluru and other parts of the state in the Deccan Palteau are in the least seismic active zone.

According to the centre's former director V.S. Prakash, the state is not actively quake-prone, as there are no tectonic plates beneath it, which collide triggering tremors and quakes.

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