NEW DELHI, AUG. 6, REUTER — A major earthquake rocked a wide region around the Burma India border on Saturday, damaging buildings but bringing no immediate reports of injuries.

The early morning tremor, measuring 7.3 on the open ended Richter scale, lasted up to two minutes in areas close to the epicenter and was felt in Calcutta, 450 KM (280 miles) away, and in Dhaka, the Bangladesh capital.

A government spokesman in New Delhi said walls of buildings had cracked up to 200 KM (125 miles) away, but that he had no reports of casualties.

The spokesman said he had no reports from Imphal, the capital of the border state of Manipur and the town closest to the epicenter.

“But if there had been anything serious, he would know about it,” he said.

The border region is a remote land of jungle clad hills with villages perched on their steep sides. The area has been drenched for weeks by torrential monsoon rains which cause frequent landslides.

Efforts to contact Imphal by telephone and telex were unsuccessful.

Officials in Rangoon said the tremor rocked the Burmese town of Homelin near the Indian border but damage was light and no casualties were reported.

The meteorology and hydrology department said a pagoda and a wall of the town’s people’s council office were damaged in Homelin, about 900 KM (650 miles) northwest of Rangoon.

In New Delhi, the Press Trust of India said people fled their homes in panic over a wide region when the earthquake struck at 6.07 am. (0037 GMT). It said the worst known damage was in Silchar, 150 KM (90 miles) from the border, where the wall of a hotel moved one meter (three feet).

The shock jolted people awake in Calcutta. “We felt the tremor just after 6 a.m., but had no idea what it was. It was big enough to worry about, though,” said one city resident.

It knocked out monitoring equipment at the seismology center in Shillong, 295 KM (180 miles) northwest of the epicenter, Indian meteorological department director H.N Srivastava said in New Delhi.

Article extracted from this publication >> August 12, 1988