Mysterious blast leaves Bangaloreans in tizzy

Mysterious blast leaves Bangaloreans in tizzy
The Times of India

Bangalore: A mysterious blast had Bangaloreans in a tizzy on Wednesday evening.

The loud sound (some said it was two blasts in quick succession) heard around 4 pm, had people in Banashankari IInd stage running out of their houses fearing an earthquake. Girish, a resident, said he even felt tremors. “It sounded as if it was coming from under the ground. My neighbours and I ran out thinking it is an earthquake,’’ he told The Times of India.

People on M.G. Road, Brigade Road, near Cubbon Park, Vasanthnagar and J.P. Nagar also reported hearing the sound.
When contacted, police officials said they did not know what caused the sound though a constable at J.P. Nagar police station said he too felt a table (in the station) shake.

No significant activity here: Indian meteorological department (IMD) director A.L. Koppar said there was no significant earthquake activity in this region on Wednesday evening. His colleagues had told him about the blast, he said. “We have also received many enquiries,’’ he told The Times of India. The IMD, he said, has a seismograph in Mangalore. “Usually, significant events — over 4.0 on the Richter scale — are immediately communicated to the area office. If this sound is a tremor, it could be a low-magnitude one.

“But we did inform our Delhi office and they said no significant activity has been recorded.’’ Asked if it could be below magnitude 4, he said a minor tremor may be possible, “but we have no recorded information about such a tremor.’’

Geotechnical scientists at the Civil Engineering department in Indian Institute of Science (IISc), on their part, did not want to comment though they too said they had heard reports about the loud sound. “We have a strong motion monitoring equipment in our centre, which has been put at a low trigger level so that it picks up low intensity sounds. There have been some ‘events’ recorded but we have to analyse the data before we can say anything,’’a scientist said. Police, state depts, everyone is clueless!

Bangalore: So, what did cause that mysterious blast, after all, practically all of South Bangalore heard it. In fact, officials from the director general of police control room called up The Times of India to ask what caused the blast.

“We do not know what caused it, so we are asking you,’’ they said. But, as the other government agencies — the state natural disaster monitoring centre and the meteorological department — had no answer, the cops, like the rest of Bangalore, had to remain clueless!