It struck on the morning of India's Republic Day, on a hidden fault far from any plate edge — proof the interior of a continent can still kill twenty thousand people.
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DownloadThe 2001 Bhuj earthquake struck on January 26, 2001, registering magnitude 7.7 (estimated magnitude). Each whole step on the moment-magnitude scale is roughly 32 times more energy, so this released on the order of 355× the energy of a magnitude 6.0 earthquake.
Its epicenter was located near 23.42°N, 70.23°E, at a depth of about 16 km — a shallow crustal earthquake. Shallow earthquakes like this release their energy close to the surface, which is why the shaking near the epicenter was so violent.
An estimated 20,005 people were killed.