It destroyed the garrison city of Quetta in the dead of night, killing tens of thousands. Troops sealed the ruined city for weeks to manage the dead.
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DownloadThe 1935 Quetta earthquake struck on May 30, 1935, registering magnitude 7.6 (moment magnitude, Mw). Each whole step on the moment-magnitude scale is roughly 32 times more energy, so this released on the order of 260× the energy of a magnitude 6.0 earthquake.
Its epicenter was located near 28.96°N, 66.44°E, at a depth of about 25 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 60,000 people were killed.