| October 26, 2005 | Wednesday | Ramazan 21, 1426 |
Reconstruction of quake-hit areas
ACCORDING to the 1998 Housing Census, there were 807,605 housing units in the 12 earthquake affected districts of Azad Kashmir and the NWFP. It is estimated that 50 per cent of this housing stock has collapsed and another 20 per cent has been badly damaged. This means that over 500,000 housing units will have to be rebuilt or repaired in a manner that can withstand future earthquakes. It is also estimated that about 12,000 formal and/or informal schools have collapsed or have been irrepairably damaged.
Importance of geological intelligence to national security
THE 10/8 earthquake has exposed the vulnerability of not only our civilian population but also our defence establishment to the lack of natural disaster preparedness.
All the money and effort that has been spent throughout the years on building a strong conventional and nuclear defence to protect the country against a possible attack from India and more lately against terrorism, have proved futile in defending our population, cities and our defence personnel/facilities from the wrath of a natural phenomenon.
More to blame than the lack of any disaster preparedness plan as such is the failure to competently analyse the vulnerability and assess the risks of the country to strong earthquakes. It is upon such an analysis and assessment, based on historical records of tremors and earthquake disasters, as well as on the latest scientific information on pent-up pressures in the subterranean rock and the shift of tectonic plates in the region, that estimates of relative seismic hazards can be made and thus, disaster preparedness planned accordingly.
Research reports on earthquakes in foreign journals such as Annals of Geophysics as well as television documentaries on ‘National Geographic’ channel have been warning of strong earthquakes in this region being long overdue. This conclusion is based on analysis of the shifting subcontinent and the enormous pent-up pressures underneath that were known to have been relieved in the past through strong earthquakes.
Yet, the significance of such studies in the geological and seismic sciences to the safety and security of Pakistan in general and its capital, Islamabad, in particular, do not appear to have been grasped by the think-tank of science policy in the country, the National Commission of Science and Technology. The NCST, which is the apex decision-making body that provides directions to the scientific and technological development of the nation, has been focusing on science and technology for economic development to the detriment of science and technology for strategic development.
Failure to assess our vulnerability and risks to earthquakes has in turn resulted in the failure to strengthen the vulnerability of our buildings and homes, and other critical facilities like hospitals, communications, roads and military facilities, specially in the more earthquake-prone areas. Here, the engineering sciences could have played an important role in helping to devise not only quake-resistant buildings, but also, for instance, better designed quake-and-landslide-proof roads in the less accessible mountainous regions.
Such pre-disaster preparedness constitutes the crucial first line of defence against strong earthquakes. Post-disaster preparedness, i.e., search and rescue, relief activities, etc, constitutes the second line of defence. But despite the vulnerability of this region to conventional and particularly since 1997, a nuclear war outbreak, we do not have a proper disaster preparedness agency or department.
For a long time, something called the Disaster Relief Cell in the Cabinet Division was supposed to look after this. Recently its name was changed to the National Disaster Management Agency under a UN-sponsored reform, but the fact that it has not been made functional so far points to the low priority being accorded to disaster preparedness and management in Pakistan.
The Federal Relief Commission was only established immediately after the 10/8 quake — more perhaps to overseer and coordinate incoming international relief than anything else. Given the emergency with which it was set up, and the scale of the quake, the commission cannot be expected to perform any better than what it is already doing. If not for the generosity of foreign governments and non-government agencies abroad as well as the people of Pakistan in helping out with relief operations and in donating relief supplies, many quake survivors would not otherwise have received help.
Granted that it is not a simple and straightforward process to create and implement a disaster preparedness programme. There are many issues which make the process complicated. Research abroad has shown that the common problems of executing preparedness plans include order of relief operations before appropriate assessment of the casualties is quickly yet competently investigated; inappropriate assessment of activities like stockpiling and identification of temporary shelters (in the case of earthquakes) and evacuation shelters (in the case of storms and floods); overcentralization of authority; overemphasis on relief activities, as opposed to search and rescue and the protection of critical facilities; overemphasis on speed of delivery of material aid rather than on the process of determining actual needs and priorities, and the failure to plan adequate protection of critical facilities.
Another common problem in carrying out disaster preparedness plans is the conflict between civilian agencies and the military in assuming the leading role in disaster management. In the US for instance, although there is a longstanding law that keeps the military out of domestic law enforcement, after the Katrina Hurricane experience in which US troops were put on the streets of New Orleans to ensure security, the Bush administration has been mulling over the expansion of the military’s role in response to future domestic natural disasters.
In Pakistan’s case, however, the military has often been called upon in past decades not only to take over disaster relief operations during floods and heavy snowfall, but also perform law enforcement operations on the streets during times of sectarian tension and during the month of Muharram. Not surprisingly, generals were appointed to head both the Federal Relief Commission and the Earthquake Reconstruction and Rehabilitation Authority established soon after the 10/8 earthquake.
But for any disaster preparedness plan to be credible, we need first to gather geological and meteorological intelligence that will enable us to honestly assess and analyse the risks and vulnerability of the nation to the threat of natural calamities like earthquakes, floods and tsunamis, and then beef up the nation’s security and defences accordingly with strengthened buildings, roads, etc. In these times of unprecedented natural disasters, such intelligence may well be as important to national security as much as military intelligence.
The scale of this disaster is far too big to be dealt with by the building of model villages, pre-fabricated houses and contractor delivered construction mechanisms that are being proposed by some official quarters. In addition, the corn crop in many areas will not be harvested this year and nor will the wheat crop be sown. Livestock has also perished and pasture fodder for livestock that have survived will not be available once winter sets in. In this situation, rehabilitation can only be done by supporting village communities to rehabilitate themselves. Such a process will also be a rehabilitation therapy for individuals and families and they will also own a development in which they have been the main actors.
The areas affected by the earthquake consist for the most part of small villages. The communities in these villages usually consist of an extended family or belong to the same clan. They have a long tradition of collective work and of helping each other. Almost all villages have masons, carpenters, electricians and those with other related building skills who have built the existing housing stock without any external help or assistance. Village communities have also participated actively with local government in the building of their water supply schemes which are perhaps the most successful examples of participatory development in Pakistan. It is this enormous community potential backed by a substantial remittance economy that has to be galvanized and supported if the earthquake affected areas are to be rehabilitated.
A proper re-building of homes is not possible before winter ends. It is not possible either before the rubble of the collapsed buildings and houses is cleared. This is because people understandably wish to build on their old sites rather than be moved to sites that they do now own. Buried in this rubble are future building materials such as GI sheets, timber beams, doors and windows, millions of cubic feet of hammer dressed or chisseled stone and mud mixed with straw. The removal of this rubble can take place during the winter months. It is suggested that a rubble-removing cash-for-work programme should be introduced and tools such as sledge hammers, pick axes, wheel barrows, gloves and dynamite should be provided to house owners and hired labour from within the community.
Rubble removal has to be followed by a programme that provides technical, financial and managerial guidance to communities for the building of their homes. Earthquakes cause fissures in the earth and destabilize building sites. To advice on the suitability of sites for rebuilding or for carrying out earth-works to stabilize sites, mobile teams of structural engineers will have to be formed. Communities working with these engineers will learn the principles for assessing building sites and for consolidating them. NGOs can turn this knowledge into posters, handbills and/or manuals. Thus, this knowledge can become a part of the community rebuilding process. This work can also be carried out during the winter months in areas where winter is not too severe.
The next step is to popularize earthquake resistant technology, using local materials. This technology is well-known. It is simple and economical. It has been used extensively in Yemen, Iran, and in Maharashtara in India. It has also been used by the self-help school building programme of the Aga Khan Foundation in the Northern Areas. For use in the affected areas, it needs to be further simplified and manuals that local communities can use need to be prepared. The Orangi Pilot Project-Research and Training Institute and the Urban Resource Centre, Karachi, are currently working with senior structural engineers to prepare such a manual. Initially, NGOs will have to supervise a few houses using the new technologies. Masons who build these houses can then be turned into mobile teams and become the trainers of other masons. This technology can also be used for future health and education buildings once the passion for high tech solutions subsides — and it will. If properly managed, a new community based culture of building will develop in the affected areas. However, the state will have to provide the communities with tin sheets, industrially manufactured insulation materials (to be placed under the tin sheets) and wire mesh and mild steel rods which are important materials for earthquake resistant technologies. In addition, loans for the rehabilitation of agricultural and pastural activity will have to be provided so that the devastated subsistence economy can be revived. These loans can be provided through the Pakistan Poverty Alleviation Fund, the National Rural Support Programme, the Orangi Pilot Project and other micro-credit organizations that know how to assess needs and to manage and monitor these loans.
Making a plan is easy. Organizing its elements centrally is also not too complex a task. The question is how a cash-for-work programme can be implemented at the grassroot level and how materials and building knowledge can be transferred to the local population. For this it is suggested that at each union council level (average population 35,000) a civilian administrator should be appointed and supported by a committee of local people and NGOs who are active in the area. They should collectively help in organizing communities, negotiate with a central authority and manage the programme locally.
The architects and engineers of Pakistan can learn a lot from the earthquake devastated buildings. There are concrete houses that have collapsed. There are mud houses that have survived. There are timber columns, beams and roofs that are standing while the rubble walls around them have collapsed. Poultry houses and palaces are intact in many areas for some strange reasons. Analysis of these damaged structures can lead us to develop cheap and new earthquake resistance building technologies rather than relying on imported literature.