INDIA: Quake Exposes Poor Disaster Preparedness Again

By Ranjit Devraj Reprint | | Print |

Ranjit Devraj

NEW DELHI, Jan 29 2001 (IPS) - As Indian authorities acknowledge that the Jan. 26 earthquake may have killed at least 20,000 people in western coastal Gujarat state, there is growing realisation that the country is ill-prepared to handle big natural disasters.

The Indian government announced it has asked for 1.5 billion U.S. dollars worth of loans from the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank, to rebuild the devastated region.

India’s biggest killer earthquake and the biggest in half a century, is comparable to the ‘super cyclone”, which killed some 25,000 people in India’s eastern coastal Orissa state in October- November 1999.

The morning quake, rated 7.9 on the Richter scale, struck India’s second most industrially developed state, which has many advantages over Orissa — rated among the most backward and poorest of India’s federal units.

But these ‘advantages’ were of little use when the high-rise big city dwellings, which are symbols of Gujarat’s prosperity, came crashing down like packs of cards, crushing their inhabitants who were at home because of the national Republic Day holiday.

The last big killer earthquake was the Sep. 30, 1993 Latur disaster in western Maharashtra state, adjoining Gujarat, which killed some 10,000 people. Natural disaster relief workers then compared it with the far more severe Los Angeles earthquake in the year 1971, which claimed 55 lives.

“The difference was preparedness,” says P.V. Unnikrishnan, an expert on natural disaster relief, who works with the non- governmental group, Oxfam International. Oxfam was involved extensively in rehabilitation work after the Latur quake.

An Oxfam publication, titled, ‘India Disaster Report’, co- authored by Unnikrishnan, describes India as “one of the world’s major theatres of disasters, both natural and human-made.”

“…floods, droughts, cyclones and earthquakes pound it (India) end to end every year,” says the document.

The report notes that the Indian government’s blueprint for natural disaster response, known as the ‘Contingency Action Plan for Natural Calamities’, is more “reactive” and places emphasis on relief rather than preventive measures to reduce the severity of the damage.

According to Unnikrishnan, authorities in the country have not taken proper note of the need for “earthquake-resistant housing in seismic zones, careful construction and layout of roads, railway lines and communication systems.”

The leading national daily, ‘The Hindu’ agreed: “The larger issue is that although more than 50 million Indians are believed to be hit by natural disasters every year, we still do not have a workable disaster management plan at any level of the government.”

“It is a disaster of another kind that a nation that takes pride in being a nuclear power comes up short, time and again in preparing for the after-effects of a natural disaster,” the daily added in an editorial.

It faulted “tardy relief and rehabilitation” for adding to the miseries of people affected by the natural disaster.

Television and news agency reports from Gujarat showed quake victims complaining that authorities were too slow to react when the disaster struck. Relief workers spoke of shortages of medical and other equipment, even three days after the tragedy.

The enormity of the disaster in Bhuj — located 20 km from the quake’s epicentre — was not fully known till one day after. The quake is reported to have killed some 6,000 people in the town of Bhuj alone, followed by the state’s big textile city of Ahmedabad where more than a thousand were killed.

Foreign rescue experts, with sniffer dogs and specialised equipment, have begun arriving in Gujarat. Several countries have pledged assistance worth millions of U.S. dollars, but reports from the area say precious time may have been lost.

More than 200 foreign experts from Germany, Britain, Russia, Switzerland, Turkey, the United States and others, have reached or on their way to the area. They are carrying state-of-the-art search machines and specialised equipment to cut through steel and concrete.

The governments of France and Israel are sending entire field hospitals to take care of the tens of thousands of injured people. The Canadian government has announced one million dollars in relief through the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA).

The Australian government Monday announced a contribution of one million dollars for clothes, blankets, medical supplies and potable water.

Gujarat is known to be located in one of the most seismic zones in the country. Yet most buildings in cities like Ahmedabad, lacked even basic earthquake-proofing measures, according to reports from the state. This was specially true of the modern, high-rise constructions.

Accusing “builders and conniving officials” in the state of flouting basic rules, The Hindu hoped that this was “one painful lesson that will now be learnt throughout India.”

The Jan. 26 Gujarat earthquake had its epicentre in the state’s Kutch region, which lies in a maximum intensity seismic zone. Even here, despite frequent small tremors in the past, there was no effort to make builders comply with basic earthquake-proofing norms.

“It is surprising that even buildings designed by professional architects and built by engineers and termed as ‘engineered constructions’, have collapsed in Gujarat,” says V. Suresh, who heads the federal government’s Housing and Urban Development Corporation (HUDCO).

Like in Gujarat, the Latur quake claimed so many lives because of shoddy construction practices. The HUDCO-led rehabilitation drive in Latur, focussed on building low-cost, quake-proof houses for the survivors.

But little has been done in other heavily populated seismic zones of India, say critics.