On 11 September 2021, in the morning hours of 5:58, there are sharp tremors that were felt by the people of Pipalkoti, Joshimath in Chamoli. People of this area came out of their premises fearing a following bigger earthquake. In between all this, one thing that was the main point of discussion was Uttarakhand Bhookamp App. This app is the brainchild of the Uttarakhand State Disaster Management Authority and was launched on 4 August 2021. This App did not give an alert before the earthquake and landed the department in trouble. This made the department give a scientific explanation of the app on why did it not give an alert to such an earthquake.
On being contacted, the ones at State Emergency Operations Centre (SEOC) in Uttarakhand Secretariat, Dehradun could not comment anything on earthquake alert not being issued. The SEOC was however aware of the earthquake, and readily told the whereabouts of the epicenter (30.4o N, 79.3o E) together with magnitude (4.7 on Richter Scale), time (05:58:31), and depth (5.0 km).
As per officials of USDMA refrained from commenting on (Earthquake Early warning) EEW system and warning lapse, and said that “The mandate of SEOC that operates on 24X7 basis round the year is to gather incident information, particularly from the affected districts and provide it to all concerned authorities and also to the media.”
The ones managing the application however had their reasons for the alert not being issued. A Professor of the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) who is the Principal Investigator of the USDMA supported the project, and responsible for managing the application and the seismic sensor array installed across Uttarakhand said, “The threshold for issuing warnings has been set at 5.5 on Richter Scale, and therefore warnings are not issued for earthquakes of lesser magnitude.
Information regarding the earthquake is however provided through notification.”