Ground moving beneath your feet

On March 5, when an earthquake measuring 4.9 on the Ritcher scale jolted a number of cities in north India, in particular the National Capital Region (NCR), the question uppermost on everybody's mind was “How safe are we?” The answer, sadly, could rank higher on the Richter than the tremors themselves as India is today more vulnerable to earthquakes than ever before. 

 

According to the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA), a whopping 68 per cent of India's urban population is in imminent danger because of poorly designed buildings that are completely vulnerable to big seismic shocks.

 

The NDMA, in a recent report, paints an alarming picture: “There are 344 towns which fall in the Zone 5 category (high risk category) making them amongst the most damage prone cities on the planet.” 

 

It also revealed, for the first time, that most buildings in India are not constructed to resist earthquakes. “Only three per cent of buildings use concrete while 85 per cent of buildings use bricks and stones with no steel reinforcements,'' a view that town planners and urban development experts need to take a serious look at.

 

India’s dismal preparedness against natural disasters was exposed during the Gujarat earthquake in 2001. Hundreds of lives were lost not because people were instantly killed under buildings but because they were trapped under rubble and the state government – like most state governments in the face of natural disasters - failed to start rescue operations quickly.

Ten years down the line, not much appears to have changed in Gujarat. According to an NDMA official, there are around 25,000 five-storey buildings and 150 eleven-storey buildings in Ahmedabad in which ground floors are left open for parking. Not that such a construction is necessarily improper, but it requires specially designed walls for support that are missing in most cases. 

 

By a coincidence, the Gujarat earthquake occurred immediately after a high powered committee (HPC) on disaster management, constituted under the chairmanship of JC Pant in August 1999, had submitted its recommendations.

 

The HPC’s proposals for disaster management plans at the national, state and district levels have progressed at a snail’s pace, if at all. In 2001, it took the Gujarat administration more than 36 hours to mobilise jeeps, ambulances, water tankers, cranes, earth movers and gas cutters and three more days to reach the worst-hit cities of Bhuj and Anjar.

 

To add to the chaos, telecom lines did not function and there was extreme difficulty in trying to transmit information on the need, type and location of relief work. Experts say the single-most important determining factor behind the huge loss of lives and property in the 2001 Gujarat earthquake were Kutch's faulty buildings, which did not incorporate quake-resistant elements.

 

And this when Kutch is in the country's highest-risk seismic zone with a long history of tremors. 

 

What is appalling is the governments' utter lack of concern for the life and safety of common people with the civil society happily acquiescing to the demands of modern urbanisation which is inherently flawed, its only driving stimulus being rampant commercialisation.

 

On March 10, 2005, the then Home Minister Shivraj Patil was candid enough to admit in Parliament that the “approach to disaster management has so far been reactive-responding to disasters after they occur. Not much attention has been paid to mitigation... It will be the endeavour of the government to ensure that over a period of time this objective is achieved.”

 

Critically, the question to ask is have any of the listed objectives been met? The Disaster Management Bill, which followed the Home Minister's statement in 2005, is flawed and certain clauses therein demonstrate that it is designed less to prepare against disasters and more to insulate the administration against slip-backs!

 

The Act stipulates that only the Supreme Court and high courts would deal with any proceedings against a government agency involved in disaster management at any level (including the district level authorities) for their failures.

 

Says Dunu Roy, director of NGO Hazards Centre, "India's preparedness against earthquakes is disastrous not just in Delhi and other vulnerable regions in the north but throughout the country. The problem is not that the existing Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) codes are not effective or that we lack knowledge of the kind of architectural design needed to resist quakes. The level of implementation is a big question, and here the government apparatus has failed miserably. Compared to the 1960s and 1970s, India's overall preparedness seems to have reduced, despite new institutions coming up. This is because the state is moving away from its welfare role. Disaster management essentially depends on three things: relief at the time of the disaster, rehabilitation of displaced people and building in measures for the long term. But judging by the recent experience in Sikkim, mitigation was rather poor. Management of disaster cannot happen at people-to-people level; the call has to be taken by the government apparatus. Public participation is the key, but government has to ensure that participation. Large-scale decentralisation is needed. But in India, we have only one district magistrate to look after lakhs of people.''

 

In the case of earthquakes, the vital early preparedness has traditionally been overlooked. Not surprisingly, when the subject of disaster management was addressed for the first time in the Tenth Five Year Plan (2002-07) document, long-term measures for mitigation of disasters related to droughts and floods with no mention of earthquakes.

 

This appears shockingly naive considering that about 50 to 60 per cent of total land mass of India is vulnerable to seismic activity of varying intensities and four earthquakes exceeding a magnitude of 8 on the Richter scale have occurred in the last 53 years, including the one in Latur in Maharashtra in 1993, a town which was considered immune.

 

Although the BIS has laid down standards for construction in seismic zones, most buildings in urban and suburban areas have little regard for the directives and local urban bodies couldn't care less.

 

Delhi health minister AK Walia agrees that BIS codes are not being implemented everywhere. “When building plans are approved, it must be ensured that they follow the BIS codes, and that is being done. But in some cases regulations are not followed and this leads to danger.'' A classic case of understatement.

 

According to Walia, the government is considering retrofitting of lifeline buildings (buildings that cater to essential services like schools and hospitals). “Technology is being upgraded for retrofitting. We are looking to either retrofit hospitals or make them quake-resistant. The 500-bed new block at GTB Hospital in east Delhi has already been enabled to resist tremors.” But one hospital among thousands is a case of too little - if not too late.

 

In cases where buildings have incorporated BIS codes, the lack of technical knowledge about seismically safe construction among the architects and engineers presents a major challenge. 

 

For instance, building quake resistant constructions are not part of the engineers' academic curriculum.

 

In Delhi, efforts to introduce a semblance of order in the realty sector, which is essentially in the hands of fly-by-night operators and businessmen of dubious origins, has been thwarted.

 

A recent Delhi government order making it mandatory for new home buyers to get a building safety certificate and approvals for their homes as being structurally sound before registration, was withdrawn as soon as it was passed. The government's rather specious argument: there aren't enough engineers qualified to carry out such inspections!

 

Points out Anuj Tiwari, Head (Projects), Global Forum for Disaster Reduction, "Delhi-NCR is the second most hazardous zone for earthquakes. Rules and regulations concerning construction of buildings have developed only lately; architects will hopefully work on that now. But the sad part is that although people's awareness has increased and they ask their builders whether the apartment they want to purchase is quake-resistant or not, they really do not have any means to verify what the builder is saying. They can be easily taken for a ride. The remedy is to have more certified houses. People should be told about check-lists to be asked from local builders.''

 

In 2005, government engineers were sent to train in California in keeping with its plan to make five important buildings in New Delhi earthquake-resistant, but only one of the five buildings – a school – has been made immune to tremors.

As for modernisation, the proposal to purchase dedicated aircraft and helicopters to reduce response time is awaitingapproval of the Empowered Group of Ministers on Disaster Management.

 

The impact of an earthquake is directly proportionate to a country's level of development. According to the World Disasters Report, 2002, “from 1992 to 2001, countries of low human development (LHD) have accounted for just one-fifth of the total number of disasters, but over half of all disaster fatalities. On an average 13 times more people die in low human development countries than in countries of high human development (HHD).”

 

That comparison has been brought outin an investigation by University of Colorado geologist Roger Bilham and Nicholas Ambraseys, a civil and environmental engineer at the Imperial College, London. Their study compares two quakes of 7.0 intensity in Haiti and New Zealand. While 30,000 perished in Haiti, there were no casualties in New Zealand.

 

This is not to suggest that the Indian government is unaware. Finance minister Pranab Mukherjee recently said that India is losing around two per cent of its GDP every year due to costs associated with relief and rehabilitation packages necessitated by disasters. Therefore the lack of preparedness in the face of such overwhelming statistics remains baffling.

 

Another flaw in disaster management: often the 'top-to-bottom' principle guides rescue operations. The processes of dissemination of warning and risk avoidance action necessarily depend on the active participation of local people in a disaster-prone area. In India, not much has been done towards that direction.

 

Arrangements pertaining to finance are lopsided and outdated. The expenditure incurred by states on ‘relief on account of natural calamities’ is treated as revenue expenditure. 

 

Financial assistance provided by the Central government to states under ‘relief on account of natural calamities’ are also expected to be spent as revenue expenditure, and, for incurring any significant capital expenditure on relief, states have been asked to dip into their own plan funds or budgets.

 

Quite incredibly, under the Calamity Relief Fund or CRF (in combination with the National Calamity Contingency Fund or NCCF), which is the only source of funding available for all states on a regular basis for all kind of natural disasters, the poorer states are given lesser allocation. 

 

Inexplicably states like Bihar, Orissa, Uttar Pradesh and Assam despite their high vulnerability to natural disasters and significant losses, have not got higher allocations than some of the less disaster-prone and economically better off states.

Medical assistance, hardly ideal in normal conditions, virtually breaks down in the face of disaster. In Gujarat, it was revealed that although there were a number of surgeons on call in the affected region, surgery was not possible because there was no equipment and electricity.

 

But then medical assistance during disasters also calls for special training of doctors. Most experts admit that medics trained to work in the comfort of hospitals may not be best equipped to tackle responsibilities on field. Trauma care is India's soft underbelly when it comes to tackling disasters.

 

Dangerously, Delhi is a classic example of this disarray, the latest acknowledgment of this hard reality coming from Washington Post. "Earthquake disaster in Delhi has the potential to go well beyond the statistics of deaths and injuries. Such a disaster in the country’s capital, which also happens to be a major commercial and industrial centre, will have huge economic and political implications which will affect the entire country and not just the population of Delhi. This adds an extra dimension to the earthquakes problem for Delhi,” the paper wrote.

 

Experts also believe that if Delhi, in particular north-east Delhi, which is home to 2.2 million people living in buildings made of single layer brick and in which extra floors are added in total disregard to norms - is hit by a major earthquake, its entire neighbourhood would collapse in a matter of minutes. In a dreadfully conjured scenario, the water of the Yamuna would turn the sub-soil into jelly, thereby intensifying the shaking manifold. Maybe only then could there be a comeuppance, whatever the collateral damage.