Earthquakes near Baghlān through history

The deadliest was not the strongest: a magnitude 6.1 on March 25, 2002 (Hindu Kush: Baghlan, Nahrin), for which NOAA records 1,000 deaths. NOAA’s list of significant earthquakes has 21 here, back to AD 50. NOAA records deaths in 10 of the events here, 2,331 in all. The latest on NOAA’s list is a magnitude 4.9 on November 28, 2018 (Hindu Kush: Baghlan). NOAA’s record here begins in AD 50 with an earthquake (Aikhanum). It grows thinner going back: 15 of the 21 significant earthquakes NOAA lists here are from 1927 on.

• November 28, 2018Earthquake · M 4.9Hindu Kush: BaghlanUSGS · NOAA NCEI
• March 25, 2002Earthquake · M 6.1Hindu Kush: Baghlan, Nahrin · 1,000 deaths (NOAA)USGS · NOAA NCEI · Wikipedia
• November 15, 1921Earthquake · M 7.871 km SSW of Jurm, AfghanistanUSGS · NOAA NCEI
• July 7, 1909Earthquake · M 7.752 km ESE of Farkhār, AfghanistanUSGS · NOAA NCEI
• AD 50EarthquakeAikhanumNOAA NCEI

• An event counts for Baghlān when it began within 100 km of its centre, or 200 km for an earthquake of magnitude 7 or more. Damage can reach further.
• USGS counts here start at magnitude 6: the catalogue’s smaller quakes thin out going back, where few instruments listened.
• NOAA lists significant events only: earthquakes that killed, did about $1 million of damage, reached magnitude 7.5 or intensity X, or raised a tsunami, and eruptions and tsunamis by like measures. Magnitudes before 1900 are its estimates from written accounts.
• Deaths are NOAA’s total for each event, wherever people died, its tsunami and fires included. A tsunami counts the dead its runup records give for this place: NOAA’s total for a tsunami includes its source quake’s.
• A tsunami from elsewhere counts where one of its runups killed or rose a metre or more.
• Counted to October 19, 2026, as is the map. The last 30 days ask USGS again.

How the layers work, where their data comes from and what they can’t tell you: Earthquakes, live, The world through history