Quake preparedness yet to pick up

GUWAHATI, March 5: The efforts made so far is the State to lay the foundation for an all-out preparedness for mitigating the hazards associated with a high-magnitude earthquake is not satisfactory as apart from holding public meetings to make the people aware of earthquake hazards and organising demonstrations by the Civil Defence on rescue operations, full assessment of vulnerable areas and the vulnerability of public buildings and training the people in precautionary/safety measures are still awaited, said noted seismologist Surya Kanta Sarma here today. Meanwhile, when contacted, Meteorology Office (met) sources here told The Assam Tribune here today that they were not aware of the meetings, whether State-level or district-level, on earthquake-related disaster management organised by the State administration or the Kamrup district administration. When contacted, Surya Kanta Sarma told The Assam Tribune that there should not be any doubt about the fact that strain is accumulating inside the earth in this NE part of India and its neighbourhood. This accumulated strain may be released instantaneously at any time giving rise to a high-magnitude earthquake. When asked to explain, he said, since 1990 no earthquake of the magnitude 6 or greater has occurred in this region, indicating the accumulation of strain in the region. Earthquakes of small magnitude contribute very little to the release of accumulated strain, he said. But, considering this background, in our State vulnerable areas are yet to be identified fully, while vulnerability of the public buildings housing schools, colleges and universities, among others, are still to be assessed. In earthquake-prone countries like Japan, people are trained in precautionary measures, but here such trainings are still awaited, Sarma said. Moreover, one point is very much pertinent here - the city of Guwahati is on a system of geological faults, which may be activated to a different degree in the event of a high-magnitude earthquake causing damage to life and property, observed Sarma. When asked to comment on the arguments put forward by a section of professionals that if a rocking bed like Japan can go for sky scrapers there should not be any reason why Guwahati cannot opt for highrise buildings, Sarma said that the fact remains that mainland Japan has not experienced earthquakes having magnitudes similar to those of the Great Assam Earthquake of June 12, 1897 (magnitude 8.7+) and the Assam Earthquake of August 15, 1950 (magnitude 8.7). But, when an earthquake of 8.3 magnitude hit Japan in 1923 both the cities of Tokyo and Yakohoma were destroyed. And in 1995, the earthquake of relatively smaller magnitude of 7.2 destroyed Kobe and Osaka cities in Japan. The death reported from these two cities following the 1995 earthquake touched the figure of 2,400 officially, while there were 11,977 persons injured, 1,082 persons were on the missing list, 21,000 houses totally destroyed. Innumerable number of houses were partially damaged and thousands of houses were burnt at the impact of the 1995 earthquake, in these two Japanese cities, Sarma said. Continuing, he said, Japan's mainland is one of the most developed areas on the globe, it has developed technologies which can make people to continue dining without anxiety even inside a highrise hotel despite there being a major tremor rocking the earth beneath. We are probably miles behind that technology because of our weak economy, he said. "But, so far I remember" Sarma said, "Japan requisitioned the help of the international community following the 1995 earthquake, in matters of rescue and relief operations". Japan's technology to resist the damage caused by earthquake, failed that time because of her underestimating the vertical forces connected with earthquake and concentrating more on horizontal forces, Sarma said. Meanwhile, Met sources told The Assam Tribune, when contacted, that the Met was not participating in the process of preparedness as it was not aware of the meetings called by the administration for earthquake disaster management for the past about one year in the State. It may be mentioned here that Met is the nodal agency of the Union Government in matters related to natural disasters caused by heavy rains, strong winds and earthquakes. The Met Department has a regional Meteorological Centre for NE operating from the city for the past three years, while it has five well-equipped seismological observatories located at Shillong, Tura, Imphal, Lekhapani and Agartala in the region.