Huge Area Changed By Assam Shock

Press, Volume LXXXVI, Issue 26198, 23 August 1950, Page 7

Huge Area Changed By Assam Shock

(N.Z. Press Association—Copyright) (Rec. 7.30 p.m.) NEW DELHI, August 22. Geological experts making an aerial survey of the Brahmaputra river basin say that 30,000 square miles of the earth’s crust were changed tremendouslv by last week’s great earthquake in upper Assam, reports a fleuter’s correspondent at Dibrugar, Assam.

Geologists estimate that the tremors, which are believed to have been the worst since .1883, affected 5,000,000 people, leaving 20,000 homeless and laying waste thousands of acres of land now split by Assures, including extensive areas under cultivation.

The latest count of the dead is 50. Experts say the earth in the region of the tremors has not yet settled. Already two tributaries of the Brahmaputra have overflowed, flooding a huge area, and the Brahmaputra itself is swelling with a dark sulphurous. current. Experts calculate that the epicentre of the earthquake was near the great bend of the Brahmaputra river 250 miles east of Lhasa.

The Associated Press correspondent in Calcutta says geologists there believe that reports of a red glow in the sky over the epicentre mean that volcanoes have burst forth. A military officer reaching Dibrugar from the Assam frontier town of Sadiya said that the town was nearly wrecked. The neighbouring town of Saikhowa was sinking and was already partly under water.

[The earthquake began about 2.20 a.m. (New Zealand time) last Wednesday, and reports by British, American, Australian, and New Zealand seismologists agreed in describing it as one of the biggest ever recorded. Mr R. C. .Hayes, New Zealand Government seismologist, placed it 6900 miles from Wellington.]