Yawning gaps in quake preparedness
The Delhi Government is not prepared to meet the challenges posed by natural calamities. If a severe earthquake hits the city, the maximum damage is likely to take place in unauthorised and resettlement colonies. As Delhi falls under seismic zone 4, making it highly vulnerable to earthquakes, there are hardly any measures being taken by the administration in unauthorised and resettlement colonies to minimise the loss it can cause to life and property.
Delhi has no contingency plans and nothing has been done in this regard for the last 10 years. The 1,639 unauthorised colonies, resettlement colonies and Walled City areas are the most vulnerable and prone to get affected by a severe earthquake. While the Government has hardly come up with any concrete plan to make structural changes in these colonies, the political parties are hellbent to get these regularised to woo their respective votebank.
Astonishingly, five lifeline buildings had been identified for retrofitting by erstwhile Sheila Dikshit Government in 2005 in case of contingency measures, but even after 10 years the authorities have failed to complete a single building to make it retrofitted. Following directions of Cabinet Secretariat, Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal has convened a meeting of all the departments to take stock of emergency measures. While the Capital’s respective districts had been told to formulate local plans long time back but only three districts — South-East, North-East and New Delhi — have formulated their plan while eight districts were yet to draw their plan.
Addressing a Press conference after high-level meeting, Delhi Chief Secretary KK Sharma said that his feeling was that tall buildings would be more affected than these colonies. “I feel that tall buildings will shake more than the dwelling units in these colonies.” Asked how many buildings were safe in the city, Sharma said that those constructed in 1960s and 1970s had not been constructed as per the seismic zone 4 requirements. “But the buildings, flyovers and bridges constructed by the PWD in the past several years have all the safety measures.”
Sharma said that old buildings had to be retrofitted to withstand severe earthquakes. The Government had earlier identified five buildings for retrofitting. While retrofitting of ludlow Castle and C Wing of Shamnath Marg has been done, work on the Police HQs, PWD, Delhi Secretariat and GTB Hospital was yet to begin. A senior officer said that the study conducted by IIT, Kanpur on retrofitting of PWD and PHQ at ITO suggested that it was a very challenging job.
“Our efforts are on to complete the retrofitting of the PWD and PHQ in two years,” Sharma said. The officer said that all the city hospitals designed by the PWD were earthquake resistant. “We have used the base isolation system in the OPD of the lNJP Hospital and the new one which is coming up in Dwarka, which would ensure that these structures will have no impact of high-intensity earthquake,” he added.
Sharma also stressed that 10 disaster management centres were fully functional and another one at Rajokri was under construction. “Even the emergency operation centres (24x7) are functional in the headquarters of the Divisional Commissioners Office and 11 other districts, which are in touch with the control rooms of the municipal bodies and Delhi Police.” The Chief Secretary said there were 19,000 civil defence volunteers to extend any possible help in the event of any eventuality in the city. He said that the district
disaster management plans have already been prepared by New Delhi, South-East and North-East districts. He said that the other districts were either in the process of finalising their plans or awaiting approval from the competent authority. Sharma said that 11 quick-response teams (QRTs) were also functional in 11 districts and more would be created in due course of time. “In case of a breakdown in the communication network, secured Tetra network is also functional,” he said, adding mock drills would also be carried out to check the effectiveness to meet the crisis situation.