Presenting the results of a new study at a meeting of the American Geophysical Union at San Francisco on 7 December, US geologist Roger Bilham of the University of Colorado said Kashmir could be hit by a quake with a magnitude of up to 9 on the Richter scale.

"The largest we estimated before was 8 beneath the Pir Pinjal (range)," Bilham told SciDev.Net. 

A major earthquake, Bilham said, could trigger landslides big enough to block the Jhelum river and flood the entire Kashmir valley. The Himalayan state has a population of 12.5 million according to the 2011 census figures. 

"But since 2007 we collected data across Kashmir through eight permanent stations and ten campaign mode stations." He said that substantial stress accumulation was found in the Zanskar region of Ladakh, north of Srinagar, with an annual  southward movement of 16 millimetres. 

"But we can say that earthquakes in western Himalayas are sourced at a shallow level — and therefore more intense — while those in the eastern Himalayas are sourced at the lower crust and have less intensity," he said.

Kumar said studies of the September earthquake in Sikkim in the eastern Himalayas and the 2005 earthquake in Muzaffarabad in Pakistan-administered Kashmir corroborated this view.    

Dar said that in a number of villages and towns across Kashmir people were building new houses without adopting earthquake-resistant techniques. “I would suggest a building code to which people strictly adhere.”