Preparing for Aftershocks to the Pakistan Earthquake

#7 dm: Practice drills are another important aspect of emergency preparedness. In the office I worked at, we used to have regular fire drills every few months - that is the only way to train workers in hi-rises (which are coming up rapidly in the subcontinent) on the importance of remaining calm and using stairs. Schools in Pakistan and India should similarly have regular drills to protect themselves from earthquakes - I wonder how many precious young lives could have been saved in the recent earthquake where entire classroom full of children were buried under, and very few found alive.

Thanks friends for your comments. Here are some responses:

escapist #1 It is very encouraging to see people like yourself and your friend in Islamabad taking the initiative to provide assistance at this time. Another chowkie, Ijaz Gul in Islamabad, said he was sending a truckload of freshwater. Community help like this is invaluable, particularly in case of destruction at such a vast scale.

amansandhu #2 There is indeed a great need to develop and apply standards in the context of conditions in the subcontinent, and to promote public awareness of the same in case of emergencies and promotion of safety consciousness.

godot #3 I guess it is not too early to think about rebuilding.

dot-dash #4 There is indeed a need to enforce building standards. The subcontinent is located in an earthquake zone, and hi-rise buildings are sprouting up. Without a tradition of applying building standards, we face more tragedies like the one at Margalla Towers. By contrast, a simple extension to a house in the US requires filing plans with the local authorities, as well as a couple of on-site visits by the inspector during and after construction. Let us hope the Pakistan government (and indeed other governments in the subcontinent) learn the lessons of Margalla Towers- you cant build hi-rises without modern safety standards being applied.

BeeJay #5 True. That is why I emphasize that these guidelines are not a substitute for common sense, and should be applied with that in mind - thus, as you rightly point out, while instructions on elevators apply to hi-rise buildings, they do not apply to homes. The important thing is for people to become more aware of the need for emergency preparedness.

delhiwala #6 Salaams to you as well, sir. This article was prompted by a call for such guidelines on unplugged by flyhighkites who is trying to organize some such work. So hopefully this will prove to be of some use to fhk and others.

Thank you Ahmad saheb, for an informative and useful article. Very few families practise emergency drills which can save people`s lives in a real emergency. Tragedies like these remind one of the importance of preparedness.

Tahmed Sir Salam to You,

Very good article and I hope someone will notice this and introduce such like measures to teach to people in India and Pakistan.

My Mother`s family(older relatives) that lived through and lost dozens of its family members in Quetta in 1935 used to tell me similar stories. Frankly, I don`t think anything has changed in terms of dealing with Disaster Management for Desis since then.
At least in Quetta you had English Armymen who were very skillfuly organized to deal with a disaster. Maybe, Pakistan govt can study how it was managed then and learn from it.

I hope that everyone that you know is ok.

Tauheed,

Your intentions behind putting up this article are to be lauded.

The article itself could probably benefit from a little bit of customization. For example, not too many residential buildings in those parts would probably have gas furnaces, elevators, and the like installed in them.

Sincerely,
BeeJay.

here`s a reason for the mass destruction.

Most modern buildings are built to new standards esp in quake zones. However, these safety standards are rendered useless if the hosues are modified - like extensions and new balconies etc. Apparently a lot of the houses (new build) have been modified and this has caused more destruction.

In asia - pakistan, mid-east, SEAsia this is a major problem - illegeal extensions.

We can all have great expectation from new standards for construction and new safety precautions etc, but if there are illegal extensions....we see what happens......

Pakistan promises to rebuild destroyed cities
By Jo Johnson and Farhan Bokhari in Islamabad

Pakistan promised on Wednesday to build new cities to replace those destroyed by last week`s earthquake, a pledge that will put further strain on the public finances as the country deals with its worst natural disaster. “What we are planning to do is, perhaps, build new cities where they`ve been damaged rather than just rebuild what we had before,” Shaukat Aziz, the prime minister, said after meeting Condoleezza Rice, the US secretary of state, in Islamabad. “So we are going to build new cities and where people own titles of land we`ll swap them with new land in the same vicinity in an organised way,” he said.

Pakistan has so far received pledges of international aid of $350m (€291m, £200m), including $50m from the US, towards a reconstruction bill expected to be in the billions of dollars. On Wednesday night, in his first televised speech since Saturday, President Pervez Musharraf thanked the international community for sending aid. The devastation in Kashmir and part of North-West

Frontier Province is immense, with 4m people affected and many roads, schools and hospitals destroyed. But Pakistan`s business centres, as well as ports, airports, factories, power plants and refineries, have been largely spared.

Economists say Pakistan`s public finances are in better shape to deal with a natural disaster of this scale than at any time over the past two decades, with the budget deficit down to about 4 per cent of GDP and public debt about 60 per cent. “The public finances are going to be stretched but not overwhelmed,” said Sakib Sherani, an economist at ABN AMRO in Islamabad.

The country ran fiscal deficits that averaged 7.5 per cent of GDP throughout the 1980s and 1990s, which caused public debt to top 100 per cent in 1999, the year Gen Musharraf seized power. The government is unlikely to be able to keep to its target of a budget deficit of 3.8 per cent of GDP set for the year to June 30 2006 without skimping on reconstruction, eating into other budget lines or taking a political risk in staggering the expenditure over several years, economists say.

ABN AMRO predicts a deficit of 4.1-4.3 per cent but insists it is still “too early to make a definitive assessment” of the earthquake`s impact. The Dutch bank has trimmed its growth forecast to 6-6.5 per cent from 6.3-6.7 per cent. Pakistan`s economy grew more than 8 per cent last year. Finance ministry officials say Pakistan-controlled Kashmir accounts for less that 5 per cent of the country`s economic output. Karachi, the main financial centre, lies more than 1,000km to the south of the earthquake`s epicentre.

Amid concerns over the cost of reconstruction, the KSE-100 index of the Karachi stock exchange rose almost 2 per cent on Wednesday on expectations of demand for cement, steel, fuel and power.

“These are the sectors where demand would rise if reconstruction gathers momentum,” said one Karachi trader. Imports of construction materials will be a drag on GDP growth that economists say will be only partially offset by higher public spending.

Tauheed,
I remember reading somewhere that if you are suddenly caught in an earthquake indoors the best place to take cover is below a door since there is a strong beam above a doorway and it wont come crashing down. A child in Pakistan was saved because he had the good sense to hide below a school desk.
Quake prone countries like India and Pakistan should teach safety measures to children in schools and adults through tv, radio etc. If school children had known what to do many lives could have been saved.

A Friend writes from Islamabad.

Wa Aleikum Assalaam Wrt Wbktu

I did talk to Ahmad yesterday and we are going to have a meeting on this with some relief workers here in Islamabad today. We will be doing our iftar together InshaAllah and we will update you as soon as we have come to an agreement on what needs to be done.

I have been involved with a relief group over the past few days and have observed some mistakes many of us are making. There are loads of people travelling to the north carrying supplies, tents and blankets with them. Unfortunately, most have little idea of where they are needed most and end up wasting their relief supplies. They either take it to the urban areas and stop there or lose it to the local PPP bandits (Qamar Zaman group) in Kashmir.

We will be talking about our specific skills and how we can together contribute to phase II: Rehabilitation. We will be outlining our activities for this weekend as well as what must follow. I would like to remind myself, you and Ahmad that effort must be more than a spurt of energy that fades away with time. The quake victims will continue to need our help over the next 6 months to get back on their own two feet. So this effort asks for our commitment over a period of time. Before we take the first step towards pleasing Allah SWT we must remember that He SWT likes good deeds that are done regularly.

The north of the country is devastated. And our help is needed now more than ever before. May Allah SWT keep us determined and bless us with the energy and the materials to help our brothers and sisters, Ameen.