Amod Mani Dixit

Department of Mines and Geology

Lainchaur, Kathmandu, Nepal

People of eastern Nepal were shaken off from their beds in the morning of 21 August 1988 at 04 hours 55 min. (local time) when an earthquake was struck in the Udayapur District creating panic in the region. The tremor was felt in larger part of northern India up to Delhi, in Burma and in parts of Bangladesh. In Nepal, the tremor was felt for about a minute. The damaged area covered almost all the parts of eastern Nepal excluding the Higher Himalayas. Damages are reported in Gangtok area of Sikkim, Darjeeling and Kurseong of West Bengal and several cities in the northern parts of Bihar. The event was a reminiscence of the 1934 Bihar-Nepal Earthquake although the magnitude of the latter was much bigger than that of the present one.