June 08, 2008	Sunday	Jamadi-us-Sani 03, 1429

KARACHI, June 7: Panic gripped the citizens when the coastal areas of the city experienced minor tremors on Saturday afternoon.

However, the phenomenon was described by the officials of the Met Office as local ground activity.

Newspaper offices were flooded with telephone calls mostly from the residents of various high-rises situated along the Clifton beach and Sea View Township. Describing their experiences, the frantic callers sought an explanation for the occurrence of these tremors.Responding to Dawn’s queries, the chief of the city’s meteorological department, Mohammad Riaz, said no earthquake — not even a minor tremor — had hit the coastal areas and the sensitive seismic activity monitoring and recording equipment at the department’s head office located on University Road near Gulistan-i-Jauhar had not recorded any such activity in the city’s coastal belt on Saturday.

He, however, said that such minor tremors, which had been experienced by some people living along the city’s beach, were called local land settlement and could be felt in the land that had been reclaimed from the sea. He assured the citizens particularly those living along the coastal belt that there was nothing to worry about and it was just a routine geological phenomenon.