Earthquake Afghanistan

On March 25, 2002, yet another disaster struck the Afghani people, this time in the form of a damaging earthquake. Of course this event in the context of the war and distress in Afghanistan connected with the terrorist attacks of September 11 2001 became a focus of world-wide attention. I made a prediction that there would be a corresponding deviation in the EGG network.

The original reports on the USGS website indicated from 800 to 1000 people were killed, 4,000 injured, 1,500 houses destroyed in the Nahrin area. Approximately 20,000 people homeless. Felt strongly in much of northern Afghanistan. Also felt in the Islamabad-Peshawar area, Pakistan and Dushanbe, Tajikstan.

The prediction followed the developed standard for natural disasters, with a period prior to the event and an aftermath of a few hours. Specifically, the analysis period was set for half an hour prior to the main tremblor, to continue for 3.5 hours after, for a total of 4 hours. The times were 14:26 to 18:26 UTC; the quake struck at 19:26 Afghani time, which is 7.5 hours prior to UTC.

The result shows no clear indication of a correlation, and the data have a moderate negative trend contrary to prediction, with a final Chisquare of 14288 on 14400 df, for p = 0.745.

Earthquake Afghanistan


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