PREVENTING
FUTURE SHOCK


Highrises can be made earthquake resistant if builders comply with safety norms.
— Photo by Mukesh Aggarwal

After the October 8 earthquake that brought death and devastation in its wake, the focus is on how safe are buildings in the event of another such major quake. Experts talk about the fallout of flouting building bylaws and constructions that are mushrooming without adequate safety measures. A report by Vibha Sharma

THE big one is yet to come, according to experts. The earthquake that hit Muzzafarabad in the Pakistan occupied Kashmir on October 8, the biggest so far in the region, (measuring 7.6 on the Richter scale) is a warning for India.

With many of its areas in the high seismic activity zones IV and V, this should be a cause for worry. As per a study by seismologists Roger Bilham and Vinod Kumar Gaur, a major earthquake is overdue in the Himalayas. With mountains becoming increasingly restless, seismicity is shifting from the north to the south. Areas south of the Himalayas and Indo-Gangetic plains, including parts of Punjab, Haryana, Himachal, Delhi, Uttaranchal and Uttar Pradesh, are becoming vulnerable.

India has broadly been divided into four seismic zones —zone-II to zone V. "Zone V, with the highest seismic intensity, comprises the north-eastern areas, parts of Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh, Uttaranchal, Rann of Kutch and north Bihar. The second highest seismically active zone IV has the remaining part of Jammu and Kashmir and among other areas in the country parts of Punjab, Himachal Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh and Delhi," says Indian Meteorological Department Chief Bhuken Lal.

Seismologists say that the wave of strong earthquakes, since the Sumatra earthquake last December that triggered tsunami, suggests that the Indian plate boundary has become seismically active. The 9.3- magnitude Sumatra quake was followed by an 8.6-magnitude tremblor near the same place. And now the latest near Muzaffarabad.

The Indian plate, says Lal, is one of the 12 major plates that are locked together to the surface of the earth like a jigsaw puzzle. "Earthquakes don’t occur everywhere, but along weak plate boundaries or faults in plates. Strain along boundaries of plates manifest as inter-plate earthquakes. Those which originate under faults on the plates are intra-plate earthquakes."

As many as 80 per cent of earthquakes in the world occur in the Pacific plate and about 15 per cent along the Himalyan Alpine belt.

National Seismic Advisor, Union Home Ministry, Anand Swarup Arya says there are some major faults in India from North-West to East and the North-East.

"These faults have already given rise to the 1905 Kangra earthquake, measuring 8 on the Richter scale, and another that struck the Bihar-Nepal Border in 1934 with a magnitude of 8.4. Since two major earthquakes have occurred on the both western as well as the eastern side, experts feel that mid-Himalayas are long over due for a big one, " says Arya, a well-known earthquake engineer from IIT, Roorkee.

On the morning of October 8, when plates flew out of sideboards and fish tanks spilled in posh penthouses in the upmarket Gurgaon and elsewhere in the North, life had never appeared so scary. As buildings swayed and cracks developed in plasters all the way to Ahmedabad, the quake that wreaked havoc on both sides of the LoC left North India without any major damage but caused widespread panic nevertheless.

In words of Arya, no building is 100 per cent safe against cracks and damage but it can be made 100 per cent safe for people.

Morphogenesis Architecture Studio Director, Manit Rastogi, the brain behind PVRs and several high-profile projects all over India, says death by earthquake is a corruption problem for which politicians, police and people are equally responsible.

India, he says, has a fantastic National Building Code that caters to needs of all municipal corporations in the country. "The problem is its implementation. The government has made stringent codes on how to construct buildings. Any construction that passes through stringent municipal regulation with complete honesty will be safe in the event of an earthquake. It just costs 4 to 5 per cent extra to make a building earthquake safe," he says.

Professor Santosh Kumar of the National Institute of Disaster Management, Union Ministry of Home Affairs, goes a step further and says an earthquake is a hazard that need not get converted into a disaster if buildings are safe and all states have a well-drafted disaster management plan in place.

Considering that only 14 states and union territories have a disaster management authority in place and that too those where disasters have struck, is the country well-equipped to face any disaster? As far as planning for disasters is concerned, Delhi had set up the Delhi Disaster Management Authority. But it has not yet finalised a consolidated state-level response plan to handle a disaster.

Recently, the National Disaster Management Authority, formed under Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, wrote to all states to form such authorities under the chairmanship of their respective chief ministers. Punjab, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh and Jammu and Kashmir — all in the critical seismic zones V and IV are yet to make institutional arrangements for long-term disaster mitigation and management by putting a disaster policy in place.

While Himachal has some sort of a disaster management committee, recently Haryana decided to enact the Disaster Management Act and convert its Revenue Department into the Department of Revenue and Disaster Management. Santosh Kumar says these initiatives are not sufficient.

At present, only 14 states and union territories in the country, including Orissa, Bihar, Gujarat, Rajasthan and Chandigarh, have disaster management authorities. Uttaranchal, learning from the Chamoli and the Uttarkashi tragedies, has gone a step further and carved out a separate ministry for disaster management.

"The states that have faced the brunt of disasters in the past are learning the lesson. However, in several states, even under zones IV and V, the level of preparedness is far from adequate," says Santosh Kumar.

Experts say the October-8 quake could have jolted other stressed faults in the Himalayas. God forbid, if a big earthquake jolts the region, it could be catastrophic, considering the large-scale haphazard urbanisation and unauthorised structures in several parts of Punjab, Haryana, Chandigarh and Delhi.

Lesson from Bhuj

Building bylaws formulated after the 2001 earthquake in Gujarat to ensure the construction of quake-proof houses have not been implemented by any state government, including Delhi, which falls under the high seismic zone. Arya says that after the Gujarat tragedy, the Home Ministry formed an expert committee, of which he was a member, to formulate "model building bylaws" under the National Building Code. No state has incorporated them and buildings continue to come up in flagrant violation of norms. "People living in single-storied houses have added two to three storeys, using half-brick thick walls.

These vertical constructions are more likely to give up when an earthquake strikes." While structural engineers should oversee the construction of earthquake-resistant buildings, building bylaws followed by most municipalities have assigned a larger role to architects and only fringe roles to structural engineers. The shakiest are unauthorised structures in illegal colonies, slums, urbanised villages or flats constructed by private builders. Structures where original plans have been tampered with are the unsafest.

While small-time builders flout construction norms and use substandard construction material, urban and rural villages —exempted from the preview of bylaws to allow bona fide residents to construct their homes without any difficulty—are carrying on haphazard construction activities.

Chandigarh has 22 such urban villages, including four in the heart of city — Burail, Attawa, Barheri and Maloya. They all have unauthorised structures, including multi-storey residential structures, hotels and marriage palaces. Most kuchcha houses have given way to brick and concrete structures.

Cities in Punjab have been urbanised in the most haphazard and unorganised way. Till about 10 years ago, there was no government authority that exercised control over and checked colonies and new townships mushrooming in the periphery of its cities.

At present, several such colonies have turned into slums. Haryana has its own share of such colonies but situation there is not so grim. The state government had set up HUDA, its urban development authority, , much earlier, thereby leaving little room for private players. Delhi has a number of illegal constructions. In fact, according to Manit, 90 per cent of Delhi lives in unauthorised structures.

These are the ones which will fall like pack of cards in the event of an earthquake. And the people who live in such structures will bear the maximum brunt of such a catastrophe.

Bypassing safety

Even as you read these lines, the building you are living in could be moving according to wind and earth forces. In fact, some highrises are designed to move two feet at the top.

In an earthquake, a building experiences transverse and longitudinal vibrations. As the ground moves randomly, the top weight vibrates accordingly. Contrary to popular belief, a structurally sound highrise is safer than an unscientifically constructed single-storied house.

Even the so-called sub-standard structures designed by government housing boards, including the DDA, will prove to be safer in the event of an earthquake if the original plans have not been tampered with, says Manit,"All it requires is a little more effort to make a building seismically proof," he adds. Any civil or structural engineer from a recognised institution can ensure the safety of a building.

Shravan Kumar, Director of the MGF, builders of several malls and townships in the country, says the National Building Code prescribes certain parameters, designs and criteria for high-rises. " High-rises that follow this code will never face any problem. The fate of typical unauthorised buildings and even single and double-storied houses built with more attention on aesthetics rather than structural nuances, is however, doubtful," he says.

"In Punjab particularly, there is a distinct lack of engineering companies offering houses on mass-scale. In most B-grade and smaller cities, people build houses with the help of local architects, without complying to structural laws either due to lack of will or awareness," he says , adding that houses and flats where additions have been made at a later stage also leads to instability in structural design.

Any building or high-rise constructed under the supervision of structural engineers with proper attention on material grades and designs to ensure its movement as a single unit in the event of an earthquake will be able to sustain the impact due to uniformity of structure.

Highrises are made of concrete and not bricks alone, which make them stronger, but deviations like adding rooms or balconies can harm their stability.

While new buildings can be made safe with little investment at the construction stage, structural stability of an old building can be achieved with the help of retrofitting, which involves doing away with irregular open spaces and tying all corners so that the building shakes like a monolithic structure.

Violation of rules

"Essentially all buildings should be constructed under the supervision of a structural engineer. An existing building can be made safe by retro-fitting at a cost that is just 10 to 15 per cent of its total reconstruction cost. Awareness is crucial. Before buying a flat or a house, ensure structural engineers were involved in its design and steps were taken to ensure its safety. The problem is we violate rules," says Arya. Structural deficiencies have been noticed in several high-rises in Delhi where builders have not used services of trained structural engineers. Most buildings, he says, do not have seismic bands and lack proper enforcement.

Many buildings have ground floors that do not even have adequate support and those balanced on stilts do not have sufficient reinforcement. Several states and union territories, including Chandigarh, Punjab and Haryana, are yet to accept newer technologies as a must in construction activities.

Specifically in Punjab, construction near Shivalik foothills has to be specifically quake-resistant. We rarely ever learn from others’ mistakes, there is no way of ascertaining your own plan of action when a disaster strikes.

As Arya says, "India has well developed BIS and earthquake resistant guidelines. The first set was prepared in 1962 and has been revised as recently as 2002. Several recent quakes, including the one in Chamoli earthquake, have shown that buildings adhering to the guidelines suffered very little damage. These guidelines are being successfully implemented by central government departments, including the CPWD, MES, P&T etc, " he says.

While each municipality has its specific guidelines, most of these go unimplemented, and as a result we get buildings that are unsafe. For example, the recent earthquake has shown that in Jammu and Kashmir, it was the traditional construction using random rubble which had lost resistance to earthquakes that spelt death for victims "There is a clause no-13928 for constructions that use stones about which no one is aware of," says Arya.

Government’s role

The Disaster Management Bill, likely to be presented in the winter session of Parliament, will make it necessary for all states to have a disaster management authority and implement the national disaster plan. "Eventually disaster management is a state’s concern and the action plan has ultimately depend upon the state’s own concerns and ability to set up institutional and financial mechanisms as per its needs, says Santosh Kumar.

At the national level, other measures are being planned. Eight battalions of 10,000 soldiers are being trained for being posted to eight different locations and money has also been sanctioned for buying aircraft for their use in cases of emergency.

The Emergency Operation Centre is being equipped with state-of-the-art communication links and micro-zonation of 38 cities above 10-lakh population is being attempted in different phases. The micro-zonation of Delhi has just been completed.

In words of Science and Technology Minister Kapil Sibal, the micro-zonation process is the government’s effort to take effective measures with proper research to minimise risk to existing buildings in the event of an earthquake. Micro-zonation , he says, will help bring area-wise changes in building bylaws to ensure quake resistant measures in the structural designs of high rises to minimise the risk of heavy damage and loss of life in event of an earthquake.

While the government is attempting a paradigm shift in the disaster management from relief and rehabilitation to mitigation and prevention, to make it successful will eventually depend upon the civil society.

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