KARACHI: Sindh, city govts lack essential equipment: Disaster management
By Azizullah Sharif
KARACHI, Oct 16: With the 20-year-old obsolete disaster management plan available with it, the city government is unlikely to cope with a situation in the city if it is hit by an earthquake measuring even 6.5 on Richter Scale.
The plan in hand had been chalked out and adopted during the times the commissionerat system was in place, way back in early ’80s. It was prepared by Mr Zaigham Jaffery, an architect and town planner, while Mr Z. A. Nizami was director general of the now-defunct KDA.
How ill-equipped and ill-prepared the Sindh and city governments are could be gauged from the fact that neither the departments and organizations concerned are equipped with the machinery and equipment required for the relief and rescue work, nor have they been assigned the role they are supposed to play in the event of such an emergency.
The most essential equipment required to rescue those buried under the rubble of collapsed buildings are snake-eye video camera, thermal imaging camera, super compact mobile power pack, telescopic spreader, high-performance telescopic rams, lifters having a capacity of 24 to 59 tons, jack ram for lifting up beams of 30 tons and having a capacity of up to 59 inches, hydraulic premium cutter, excavator with tyre and twin capacity hammer, excavator with chain (crawler), etc. None of these essential equipment are available with any department of the Sindh government or the CDGK’s Fire Brigade department.
Irony of the fact is that although the Civil Defence Organisation, which plays an important role in case of an emergency, has not yet been devolved fully to the city government.
Performance of the CDO is declining with each passing day. Its strength of registered volunteers is just 500 for a city of over 15 million population.
Expressing concern over the vulnerability of high-rise buildings to tremors, independent experts deplore that the relevant authorities have never bothered to conduct a survey of such buildings. Most of these buildings lack strength to withstand tremors. On the contrary, the government has been encouraged certain builders by regularizing their illegally raised buildings in the construction of which either provisions of the Sindh Building Control Ordinance (SBCO) have been flouted or inferior quality material has been used.
The CDGK’s Civil Defence and Fire Brigade Department’s District Officer, Shoaib Mohammad Khan, said although it was mandatory upon the KBCA to seek the opinion of Fire Brigade department whether an illegally constructed building had met the provisions relating to fire-fighting arrangements before granting it regularization, no such case had ever been referred to the department.
CNG STATIONS: Criticizing policy of the Master Plan Department, CDGK, under which setting up CNG stations and petrol pumps in residential areas have been allowed, the experts point out that this had been resorted to despite the fact that quake or tremors normally cause short circuits resulting in eruption of fire at such places having stocks of highly inflammable substances.
“With a view to making the policy liberal, the department had even got the by-laws changed and now the condition of one-km distance between two CNG stations/ petrol pumps has also been done away with,” sources said.
