Seismic telemetry stn to become functional soon

Patna: Inaugurated by CM Nitish Kumar more than two years back, the much-needed Bihar Seismic Telemetry Network (BSTN) station at Patna Science College is likely to become functional soon.
The BSTN is supposed to provide timely information on the location and magnitude of an earthquake and the geographic distribution and severity of the tremor.
Bihar Mausam Sewa Kendra (BMSK)’s joint director C N Prabhu told this newspaper that necessary steps have already been initiated by this centre for procuring all the desired instruments like broadband seismometers as early as possible.The building of this central network station has already been completed and the BMSK has got geophysicists and other technical staff to monitor the instruments. The network stations in other nine districts of the state have also been constructed. Hopefully, this useful centre would become operational within the next six months, Prabhu said.
The idea to set up this centre was tossed by the CM himself after the devastating Nepal earthquake of 2015.
Consequently, after hectic consultations, the Bihar State Disaster Management Authority (BSDMA) signed an MoU with the Patna University (PU) in 2019 for setting up a central telemetry network station at Patna Science College.
It was further proposed that telemetric stations would also be constructed at Motihari, Siwan, Chhapra, Muzaffarpur, Madhubani, Samastipur, Saharsa, Munger and Purnia and an advanced centre of seismological research would come up at Patna Science College. These stations, with sensitive seismometers to record earthquake waves 24X7, would transmit data directly to the satellites which would be received by the central station in Patna. PU geology department faculty members would monitor the data regularly.
BSDMA’s vice-chairman Uday Kant Mishra said all the network stations were constructed as per specifications despite various constraints coming in way.