Context: A powerful earthquake of magnitude 7.7 and at least six aftershocks struck central Myanmar, bringing buildings down in the country’s second-largest city, Mandalay, and killing at least 1,600 people.

Neighbouring Thailand was also affected. Parts of Northeast India also felt the shake, although no casualties or significant damage to property has been reported.

Key points to learn

• Earth’s lithosphere consists of moving tectonic plates whose interactions shape the planet’s geology. Earthquakes occur when these plates suddenly slip, releasing stored elastic strain energy as seismic waves that shake the ground.
• Myanmar is positioned in a region where several tectonic plates meet. It lies at the confluence of the Indian Plate, Eurasian Plate, Sunda Plate, and the smaller Burma Microplate. This junction makes the region naturally predisposed to seismic activity.
• Myanmar earthquake took place due to the “strike slip faulting” between the Indian and Eurasian plates, meaning these two plates rubbed sideways against each other. 
• The quake took place on the Sagaing Fault, which runs north to south through the centre of Myanmar. A fault is a fracture or zone of fractures between two blocks of rock, which allows the blocks to move relative to each other, sometimes leading to earthquakes.
• The Sagaing fault marks the tectonic plate boundary between the Indian plate to the west and the Eurasian plate to the east. The Indian plate is moving north along the fault compared to the Eurasian plate.
• The earthquake that struck Myanmar was characterized by a shallow hypocenter—approximately 10 kilometers below the surface.
• Shallow-focus earthquakes tend to be especially destructive because the seismic energy does not have far to travel before reaching the surface. This allows for a greater proportion of the energy to affect structures and the ground itself.
• In regions with soft or loosely consolidated sediments, such as parts of central Myanmar and even areas as distant as Bangkok, seismic waves can be amplified, resulting in stronger shaking and more severe damage than would occur in rockier settings.

Source : BBC