February 7, 2006	Tuesday	Muharram 8, 1427

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ISLAMABAD, Feb 6: A conference on challenges thrown up by last October’s earthquake was told on Monday that Islamabad is as tectonically vulnerable as Japan and California and structures here will have to be designed for higher seismicity.

“Scary but something we have to live with,” said Head of Earthquake Engineering, Nespak, Dr Suhail M. Qureshi.

“We need to be prepared and design structures which will be earthquake resistant to minimize injuries and prevent loss of lives,” he said at the consultative conference organized jointly by the Strengthening Participatory Organization (SPO) and Church World Service, Pakistan-Afghanistan (CWS-P/A).

Dr Qureshi warned that the next earthquake could be “equally devastating or potentially stronger”.

Pakistan was sitting on the boundary of Eurasian and Indian plates and for centuries the latter had been pushing against the former directly under Balakot and Muzaffarabad, he said.

“Some say that the seismic energy released (by the Oct 8 quake) was only 10 per cent. But others estimate that 30-40 per cent seismic energy had been released because of so many aftershocks. Sophisticated instrumental data is needed to understand the tectonic movements and to be able to make some assessment,” he said.

Dr Qureshi considered it “imperative” that people uprooted by the earthquake were resettled “at least a kilometre away” from the exposed fault lines.

“Balakot, has to be shifted 5 to 10 kilometres from its old ruined site. The ground there has turned into powder and rebuilding is not advisable,” he said.

Earthquake engineer Kubilay Hicyilmaz representing GOAL, an Irish NGO, was surprised that “Pakistan is borrowing a lot of money for reconstruction without carrying out assessment in quake hit areas. There were no signs on houses which said that this building must be demolished, that can be repaired, this site is safe to reconstruct,” he said.

Dangerous buildings were still being used. People were plastering damaged portions because their was no assessment, Kubilay said.

“Ground realities must be established before spending the World Bank loans. Findings must be communicated to affected population,” he insisted.

He also emphasized the need for training to improve building quality. “Everybody should be trained but target audience should be ‘mistris’ who built 90 per cent of houses. It is unfortunate that as much as Rs300,000 were being spent on engineers, Rs100,000 on sub-engineers but none on craftsmen. There is need to champion craftsmen, the men on the ground.”

The conference concentrated on two key issues in the recovery and rehabilitation of people affected by the earthquake — livelihood and housing. The discussions within the two working groups encompassed challenges faced by women and children in particular, and issues of environment and local capacity building.

The participants emphasized “the serious and urgent need” to adopt community driven, focused and participatory approaches towards reconstruction and rehabilitation of earthquake-affected people.

Environmental and ecological issues and inclusion of women should be paramount in planning while livelihoods must not only be restored but improved.

Recommendations made by the working group on housing said that seismic parameters (PGA values) evaluated for site specific conditions must be used for dynamic analysis. For an area spanning 500 meter on either side of any fault-line, special risk evaluation studies must be carried out before raising any structure.