life in Kolkata and other parts of Bengal was thrown out of gear for a brief period of time late on Wednesday afternoon even as a strong earthquake with its epicenter in Myanmar shook the State quite strongly.
The eastern metropolis shook for quite a few seconds with thousands of people literally leaping out of their multi-storey offices and flats to the safety of open space causing long hours of traffic jams, police said.
The earth quake measured 6.8 magnitude and caused cracks in various houses at Salt lake, Siliguri, Jalpaiguri, Coochbehar and Malda, sources said.
As a precautionary measure the Metro Railways suspended its services for a good half an hour. Indrani Banerjee CPRO Metro Railways said the “services were not exactly suspended but the passengers were offloaded at particular stations and the empty rakes were pulled till the next station where other passengers were picked up. This was done to check the tracks whether they had been damaged.”
Elsewhere some of the buildings including the 14-storey State Secretariat Nabanna developed minor cracks even as top officials ran for safety along with the common people. later Chief Secretary Basudeb Banerjee declared closure of all offices for the day.
“Things were literally shaking like pendulum and we became off-balanced when the security staff said it was an earthquake and asked us to vacate the place,” an IT employee at Salt lake said.
Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee who was touring North Bengal was safe along with her entourage, police said. “Strong tremors were felt in Darjeeling, but there is no report of casualty so far,” said DM Anurag Shrivastava.