Apartment owners urged to seek safety guarantees

GUWAHATI, February 6: The Northeast Apartment Developers' Association (NADA) today called upon the multi-storied apartment dwellers of the city to ask their respective builders to give guarantee of safety in the event of a major earthquake so as to prevent a Gujarat-like situation. Addressing a press conference at the Guwahati Press Club here this morning, NADA president Bimal Phukan, its vice-president Jagat Prasad Barua, general secretary Amal Barua, architect Gautam Barua and soil tester L Karim, however, said that no one can guarantee whether the city apartments will collapse or not in case a major quake hits the city. But, so far as the apartments built by the NADA members, it can be said without any ambiguity that these apartments were constructed by strictly adhering to the Indian Standard (IS) norms set for the seismically high sensitive zones (Zone V) of the country, they claimed. When asked to comment whether they can assure that there was no aberration in matters of following the IS norms, they said that no one can claim that all builders are honest but certainly they are not more dishonest than the builders of the other parts of the country. When pointed out to the fact that the Guwahati Metropolitan Development Authority (GMDA) has identified 51 multi-storied apartment buildings in the city as vulnerable to earthquake, they said that it was not fair on the part of the GMDA to arrive at such a conclusion basing only on physical verification and that too hastily within two or three days' time. They also requested the GMDA to allow the builders also to join in the process of identifying vulnerable buildings. Commenting on the Gujarat tragedy, they said that in Gujarat buildings crumbled because of their not having the frames like lintel beams, but here in the NE region, most of the buildings have the frames. Moreover, spacing in concrete slabs are also arranged with gaps of around six inches, while in Gujarat such spacings were arranged with gaps of several feet -so big that a man can pass through a gap, they said. Apprising the newsmen of the care the NADA members take to build their apartments, they said the NADA members take the help of professional soil testers before going to the architect for preparing the designs of their apartments and after obtaining the design other steps to build the buildings are taken. During the recent years, about 40 to 50 multi-storied apartments have been built by the NADA members in the Guwahati Metropolitan area. The NADA, set up in 1995 has 25 members, even as the city has about 100 to 150 multi-storied apartment builders, they said.