In 2011, a Mw 6.9 intraplate earthquake struck the state of Sikkim in India.The earthquake caused substantial damage to the built environment in Sikkim.The ground motions from the damaging earthquake were recorded at six stations in Sikkim.A detailed analysis of the key characteristics of these strong ground motions can enable a better understanding of the enormous structural damage.While it is recognized that the amplitude and frequency content of seismic waves are the two key characteristics that can be correlated with observed structural damage, it is often the sequence of arrival of frequency and amplitude, which affects the response of the structure.This sequencing is understood from continuous wavelet transforms (CWTs) which can, at any given instant of time, convey information on both the time and frequency characteristics of the seismic wave.In this paper, published reconnaissance studies are examined to tabulate significant details of the observed structural damage from six towns affected by the 2011 Sikkim earthquake.These damage observations are then correlated with the CWT representations of the seismic waves corresponding to these towns. © 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.