Nations lagging behind in building code compliance pay heavily at the time of natural disasters like earthquakes, says N. Vinod Chandra Menon, former member of National Disaster Management Authority.
“Take for instance the case of Haiti earthquake which struck in January, 2010.
It measured 7.0 on the Richter scale and is said to have claimed over 2,30,000 lives. In a small gap, Chile was also hit by a powerful 8.8 magnitude earthquake in February 2010.
The intense shaking lasted for about three minutes and the occurrence ranks as the sixth largest earthquake ever to be recorded by a seismograph and yet only 800 people died,” says Mr. Menon, explaining that it is because Chile has strong compliance to building code.
“The impact of the Chile disaster was almost 30 times more that the one at Haiti and it could have claimed the lives of over 10 lakh people.”
He says the earthquake in Nepal is one of the major disasters in Indian sub-continent after the 1934 Nepal-Bihar earthquake which had caused widespread damage in northern Bihar and in Nepal. As many as 29 of the 75 districts of Nepal were affected in the tragedy, he recalls.
“Unlike then, the population of Nepal has gone up now and buildings have replaced kutcha houses most of which have flattened. What we are receiving are the city reports while we don’t have the pictures of rural areas where the destruction would have been even more,” he says.
Medical preparedness in mass casualty areas is a crucial aspect.
“By the time we get information on the number of deaths in the affected areas, more people die. Information from rural areas is not yet available. We’ll need a good number of ortho-surgeons, radiologist and doctors besides putting in place a huge medical architecture.”
Involving affected youth in search and rescue operations is important because if discontent among people is allowed to brew, the crowd could become a mob, he says.
