Earthquakes near Dārjiling through history

It was also the deadliest: NOAA records 10,600 deaths for it. NOAA’s list of significant earthquakes has 5 here, back to 1934. NOAA records deaths in 5 of the events here, 10,865 in all. The latest on NOAA’s list is a magnitude 7.1 on January 7, 2025 (2025 Southern Tibetan Plateau Earthquake). NOAA’s record here begins on January 15, 1934 with an earthquake (1934 Bihar-Nepal Earthquake).

• January 7, 2025Earthquake · M 7.12025 Southern Tibetan Plateau Earthquake · 134 deaths (NOAA)USGS · NOAA NCEI · Wikipedia
• January 15, 1934Earthquake · M 8.01934 Bihar-Nepal Earthquake · 10,600 deaths (NOAA)USGS · NOAA NCEI · Wikipedia

• An event counts for Dārjiling 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