The Union home ministry’s disaster management experts have been warning for the last three years of a big earthquake that may register in excess of magnitude 8.2 in the Himalayan region whose tectonic plate has already been ruptured by a series of temblors, the most recent being the one epicentred in Mainpur last week.
Considering nearly two thirds of India lies in the hot seismic zone with a “ring of fire garlanding entire north India, especially the mountains”, it would pay to heed the serious warning. Houses shook in Kashmir recently when the Hindu Kush mountains trembled. At threat is a lot more than just the Himalayan region, the national capital being as much in the crosshairs as many other cities in north India.
While bureaucrats have been forewarned to crank up the disaster management agencies to act in an emergency, what is required is a change in the building code for vast swathes of India. It is a truism that quakes don’t kill people as much as buildings do, particularly those built of concrete. It is not easy to change the entire building code of a vast region.
However, unless the governments at the Centre and the states start building consensus on this, an earthquake-proof building code may never come about. The Japanese have known how to live with this hazard every day of their lives and they have shown how to build quake-resistant buildings and reduce fatalities.
They have much to teach us provided we wish to learn and prepare for a future in which a major chunk of the population is at risk from buildings falling in major earthquakes.
