I have worked in Papua New Guinea, and was stationed at the north coastal town of Madang in the 1980s. I used to live in a quake-resistant building. One experienced tremors almost every month, sometimes twice. In 1988 there was a quake that measured 7.9 to 8 on the Richter scale but there was no significant damage to the buildings in Madang. The factory I built for a plantation 90 kilometres away in the hills and at an altitude of 3,000 feet was weakened. I trust this information may interest the authorities in India to start thinking ahead and building appropriate earthquake-proof buildings, suitable for different earthquake zones than to be complacent and face catastrophic damage (“ >Taking a comprehensive view of quakes ”, May 18).
K.V.S. Krishna,
Chennai
