M A I N   N E W S

Missing: disaster management
by Hari Jaisingh

IT is a heart-rending sight of death and destruction. And it will take several days before we fully grasp the magnitude of the tragedy.

I have been familiar with the state and its people — from Bhuj to Ahmedabad and Surat. My memories of Bhuj as a lively town are still fresh — a sort of oasis in the Rann of Kutch. The people are sturdy and colourful in a terrain which is not so friendly.

Bhuj town is smack in the middle of Kutch, and Kutch is the most earthquake-prone region in the country. Hence, Bhuj has been hit beyond imagination. According to one estimate, one-tenth of houses have been reduced to rubble and the rest are in various stages of destruction.

Ahmedabad is another city that has borne the brunt of the quake. The heart-wrenching cries of children trapped under the debris sum up the state’s acute agony.

The tragedy could not have come at a more inopportune moment. For the third year running, Gujarat is living under a severe drought. Kutch is also a severe drought-prone area. This double blow has felled the state administration and sapped the will of the people. Even a state which is most industrialised in the country can cope up with only so much.

The Kutch region has had its quota of calamities. It falls in a high seismic zone. This fact has been known to the authorities. Still, as in other walks of life, we live from one disaster to another without formulating policies and action plans which can minimise loss of life as and when a high-intensity earthquake strikes.

Of course, our knowledge of what goes on beneath the earth’s surface and the nature and character of seismic waves is both inadequate and scanty. All the same, it is possible to predict an earthquake by measuring electric currents on the earth’s crust.

A warning system developed by the University of Lisbon to trace an earthquake can pick up seismic waves in 25 seconds. It takes only 10 seconds to send a warning to the civil authorities directly or indirectly and 15 seconds before the earthquake hits the city. This gives enough time to switch off the city’s gas and power systems.

The Japanese have been spending money on research in this area, especially on architectural designs which can withstand tremors and thereby prevent house collapses and loss of life.

What has made nature’s fury a searing tragedy in Gujarat is man’s greed and gullibility. Developers of housing colonies are said to have used substandard material to put up multi-storey complexes. Even the architectural plans are often faulty. That is why many modern buildings in Ahmedabad crumbled, trapping residents. As one structural engineer moaned, earthquake-proof designs are available and it cost an extra 5 per cent of the budget to put them in place. But then who cares in today’s state of drift and non-governance?

India is known to be seismic-prone and, it is, therefore, necessary to evolve an earthquake-proof culture. There have been innumerable warnings for Himachal Pradesh in this regard. But has any concrete plan been worked out? The answer is “no”.

Just look at Tokyo which sits on a high-risk zone and experiences tremors every other day. We spend crores of rupees in relief operations but hardly bother to organise disaster management with proper support systems like fire departments and hospitals.

Of course, the Army and the Air Force are responding to the calamity admirably well. But we need to have firm plans by civil authorities to tackle disaster challenges instead of aerial surveys, false promises and committee rajs. We cannot afford to repeat the cycle of patchwork responses. The people in agony deserve a better deal. We need a thoroughly professional disaster management with a human touch.