DUSHANBE, November 11, 2013, Asia-Plus — The Prime Minister Secretariat reports that a 5.0 magnitude earthquake that struck near the village of Andigan in the Vahdat district in the evening of November 10 destroyed 104 houses and partially damaged 259 houses. No injured has been reported.
Prime Minister Oqil Oqilov held a meeting on November 11 to discuss issues related to removing the effects of the Vahdat quake and providing assistance to the quake victims.
According to the Dushanbe seismic station, a tremor measuring 5.0 points on the MSK-64 scale struck near the village of Andigon Sunday evening at 5:03 pm.
Further tremor of 3.0 on the MSK-64 scale was registered near the village of Andigon on the morning of November 11, at 7:03 pm. No damage has been reported.
We will recall that a tremor measuring 4.0 on the MSK-64 scale jolted Tajik capital Sunday morning at 10:15 am. The epicenter of the earthquake was reportedly registered 21 kilometers to the southwest of Dushanbe and 11 kilometers to the northwest of the Yovon Township in Khatlon province. The intensity of the quake in the epicenter was evaluated at 5.0 on the MSK-64 scale. No damage has been reported so far.
The Medvedev–Sponheuer–Karnik scale, also known as the MSK or MSK-64, is a macroseismic intensity scale used to evaluate the severity of ground shaking on the basis of observed effects in an area of the earthquake occurrence. The scale was first proposed by Sergei Medvedev (USSR), Wilhelm Sponheuer (East Germany), and Vit Karnik (Czechoslovakia) in 1964. It was based on the experiences being available in the early 1960s from the application of the Modified Mercalli scale and the 1953 version of the Medvedev scale, known also as the GEOFIAN scale.
With minor modifications in the mid-1970s and early 1980s, the MSK scale became widely used in Europe and the USSR. In early 1990s, the European Seismological Commission (ESC) used many of the principles formulated in the MSK in the development of the European Macroseismic Scale, which is now a de facto standard for evaluation of seismic intensity in European countries. MSK-64 is still being used in India, Israel, Russia, and throughout the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS).
The MSK scale is somewhat similar to the Modified Mercalli (MM) scale used in the United States. The MSK scale has 12 intensity degrees.
