The suffering that Quetta endured nearly seventy years ago seems all but forgotten today
“QUETTA, in the north-west corner of India, with a summer population of perhaps sixty or seventy thousand, died a violent convulsive death early on the morning of Friday, May 31, 1935. Three minutes after three o’clock, before the sleepers had had time to turn over in their beds, the ground on which the city was built began to shake and roar like a wounded beast. Thirty seconds later, Quetta was a jagged lifeless ruins. Its inhabitants were either dead or buried deep under the rubble, its roads blocked by the landslides of collapsed buildings, its hopes blighted and its fears unrealized. With a single despairing wail, the city died.” With these words, the British writer, Robert Jackson portrays the destruction of Quetta by the 1935 earthquake in his book Thirty Seconds at Quetta.
The horrors and havoc of the merciless earthquake of 31st May 1935, because of its severity and obliteration, shall always be green in the minds of the people of the provincial capital. It was early in the morning that day, that within 30 seconds, thirty-thousand people of the city had been killed and their surroundings reduced to rubble. The intensity of the earthquake was 7 at the Richter scale and its epicentre was in the Chiltan Mountain Range, 15km west of Quetta. The potency of the earthquake can be gauged by the fact that the mountains of the surrounding area sustained cracks. The wave of earthquake struck areas from Quetta upto Kalat with greater magnitude and devastation.
A correspondent of The Times, London, after visiting the remains of the city wrote, “there is nothing to pick out. No mosque rises from the ruins to show where men forgathered, the market place where men met to barter cannot be distinguished today. There is nothing but a wide spread mass of debris, tapering off into dun landscape beyond which in turn is a rim of forlorn and sad hills where no trees grow.”
However, strange enough the Quetta Cantonment recieved minute damages and as whole remained safe and sound. It is believed that this happened because of the Habib Nala which separates the city from the Cantonment area.
Quetta, the then headquarters of British Balochistan Agency and the biggest garrison of British Army in the area, was a hill station and was called little London because of its western style buildings, weather and beauty. The population of Quetta then consisted of more than 60,000 people with all civic facilities. The construction and the appearance of the city was more or less like a European city. Like in other places, the British maintained strict discipline here. As on the entry points of the city, foreigners would be inspected and sick people would not be allowed to step in the city. But this beauty of Quetta was erased in the thirty-second earthquake on May 31, 1935.
The earthquake’s damage were so catastrophic that the relief operations continued for months. With the outbreak of epidemic diseases, the whole city was bulldozed and the remaining of the deceased were buried in mass graves. One mass grave, still stands today, at Jinnah Road where the deceased of the Christian community were buried. Civic life was so disturbed that even after ten years of the earthquake it did not return to the pre-earthquake normal. Schools and offices were shifted to Pishin, 30 miles east of Quetta.
After the earthquake the first settlement built was Tin Town where seven earthquake proof houses were introduced. Being situated on active seismic zone, the construction of multi-story buildings was prohibited. The building code of the city was changed entirely and the reconstruction of the city followed strict building codes as the then Municipal Committee was assigned the task of the implementation of these safety measures to avoid the destruction of 1935.
But now, with the passage of time, the institutions responsible for the strict implementation of building code have forgotten their duties and left the inhabitants of Quetta at the mercy of nature. Quetta today, with its 40km circumference, is a growing concrete jungle with lesser impression of town planning. The double, triple and four story buildings have become a common sight in the city. If the basements are included, one can even find five and six story buildings in Quetta, built with poor quality material and by inexperienced builders. In fact, at some places, double story buildings have been constructed upon earthen constructed houses.
Negligence on the part of concerned government agencies is so criminal that with the approval of two story building there is a custom of constructing three and four story buildings. But no one, no agency is bothered to check this growth. Why? No one knows. The height of negligence is that the Quetta Municipal Corporation has given permission to construct three and four story buildings in Quetta, in the result breaking its own regulations.
Quetta is always faced with the danger of an earthquake as it lies on an active seismic zone. Then there is the depleting water level and reckless pumping of water that is creating vacuums in the interiors of the earth layers. The remains of karezes, underground water channels, tall buildings and narrow roads and the poor quality construction. These factors will definitely influence devastation on a greater level, even if a minor earthquake hits the town. In 1935, Quetta was inhabited by 60,000 to 70,000 of whom more than 30,000 died. Today, the provincial metropolis is believed to house over one and a half million people. The number are just too scary to think.
A half-hearted campaign was launched by the previous government to demolish the buildings constructed violating the building code. Alas, no action was witnessed as the building mafia was highly involved in this whole scheme of things. Rather after the then so-called campaign, the violation became so sharp that the erection of buildings has ceaselessly continued.
One can neither change the characteristic of the neighbouring volcanic Chiltan Mountain nor Quetta can be shifted out from the active seismic zone. And neither are natural disasters in control of humans. Still, things can be controlled. All it needs is some proper planning. Just follow the building codes and quality control, the intensity of the disasters can be minimized to a certain extent.
Thus, it is high time that the relevant governmental departments should initiate a massive operation against the violations of building code, beginning with the government buildings because a stitch in times saves nine. The future of defenceless inhabitants of Quetta is at the mercy of the representatives of the people whether to keep Quetta a living city or a future ruined.
The suffering that Quetta endured nearly seventy years ago seems all but forgotten today 
