An Earthquake Devastates Kashmir

On the morning of 8 October 2005, a magnitude 7.6 earthquake struck northern Pakistan and surrounding areas, centered about 20 kilometers north-northeast of the city of Muzaffarabad. Kashmir sits along the continental collision zone where the Indian plate pushes beneath the Eurasian plate at about forty millimeters per year. This tectonic movement produced shallow reverse faulting on a northwest-trending thrust fault near Muzaffarabad, with modeling indicating a rupture roughly seventy kilometers long and violently shaking mountain communities across disputed borders.

The physical destruction was catastrophic across northern Pakistan and northwestern Jammu and Kashmir in India. Vast numbers of buildings were severely damaged or destroyed across both countries, and estimates of those left homeless ranged from about 3.3 million to 4 million. In towns such as Balakot, roughly ninety percent of buildings were reduced to rubble, while nearly every building in Muzaffarabad sustained damage or collapsed. Across the Line of Control, Indian border districts also suffered intense destruction, with about 80 percent of the town of Uri destroyed and more than 32,000 buildings collapsing in Indian-administered Kashmir, according to the USGS.