Daily Editorial Analysis

Cities that Withstand (GS Paper 3, Disaster Management)

Context:

• The destruction caused by earthquakes in Turkey should be alarming for India. Recently, tremors have been felt in Meghalaya and in the region around Joshimath and Chamoli in Uttarakhand. Moreover, geologists have warned of a probable massive earthquake in the Himalayan state.

Recent judgement of Delhi HC:

• In this context, one should pay serious attention to the recent observations made by the Delhi High Court. The court, while hearing a petition, asked the state government to file a status report and action plan on the structural safety of buildings in Delhi.
• While the concerns of the court are pertinent and demand urgent attention, one cannot rely on the judiciary to make our cities well-prepared for an earthquake. Neither can a state government with limited capacity audit the buildings of a city in a matter of weeks.
• Nearly 58 per cent of the Indian landmass is vulnerable to earthquakes and the concerns that have been raised by the court need a policy response instead.

Shortcomings in India’s earthquake preparedness:

• Currently, India’s policy on earthquake preparedness operates primarily at the scale of structural details. Guided by the National Building Codes, this includes specifying dimensions of the structural members and details of the reinforcements that join these elements together. While scientifically sound, this view on earthquake preparedness is myopic.
• First, it ignores the buildings that were constructed before suchcodes were published in 1962. Such buildings form a large part of our cities.
• Second, it assumes infallibility in the processes of enforcement, relying only on penalisation and illegalities.
•  Third, it treats earthquakes as a problem of individual buildings, as if they exist and behave in complete isolation from their urban context.

Scale of building details:

• The truth is that buildings exist in clusters and in the event of an earthquake, behave as a system. They collapse on nearby buildings and on the abutting streets, damaging buildings that might have otherwise survived and blocking evacuation routes.
• Earthquake preparedness, therefore, needs to act at the scale of building details as well as that of cities.
• At the scale of building details, we need to create a system of retrofitting existing structures and enforcing seismic codes with more efficiency. While there has been political talk and piecemeal efforts towards retrofitting, we still lack a comprehensive policy.

Such a policy should include two measures:

1. First, to create a system of tax-based or development rights-based incentives for retrofitting one’s building up to seismic codes. Such a system of incentives will enable the growth of an industry around retrofitting and will generate a body of well-trained professionals and competent organisations.
2. And second, by ensuring better enforcement of seismic codes through a similar model. A step forward in this direction was the National Retrofitting Programme launched in 2014. Under the programme, the Reserve Bank of India directed banks to deny loans for any building activity that does not meet the standards of earthquake-resistant design. Carrots, however, will work better than sticks.

Example of Japan & San Francisco:

• Japan has invested heavily in technological measures to mitigate the damage from the frequent earthquakes that it experiences. Skyscrapers are built with counterweights and other high-tech provisions to minimise the impact of tremors.
• Small houses are built on flexible foundations and public infrastructure is integrated with automated triggers that cut power, gas, and water lines during earthquakes. All of this has been a result of cultivating an industry around earthquake mitigation and fostering expertise.
• San Francisco,another of the world’s famous earthquake-prone cities was devastated by an earthquake in April 1906.
• The city saw more than 3,000 deaths and massive destruction of property. Following the disaster, San Francisco implemented policy changes similar to Japan’s and when the next major earthquake hit in 1989, the city recorded just 63 casualties.

Urban-level policy for earthquake preparedness:

• At the scale of cities, the problem is more complex, massive, and unattended. None of the urban renewal programmes including the latest Smart Cities Missionhave devised an urban policy for earthquake preparedness.
• An urban-level policy should start with surveys and audits that can generate earthquake vulnerability maps showing parts of the city that are more prone to serious damage.

This should follow four criteria:

1. The percentage of vulnerable structures in the area;
2. The availability of evacuation routes and distances from the nearest open ground;
3. Density of the urban fabric;
4. Location of nearest relief services and the efficiency with which these services can reach affected sites.

• Using such maps, enforcement, incentives, and response centres can be proportionally distributed across the urban terrain.
• Flood zone mapping is a good example of such an exercise that has proven to be successful in terms of timely evacuation and efficient implementation.

Approach:

A policy on earthquake preparedness will require a visionary, radical and transformative approach.

• Historic centres: Some areas such as dense historic city centres will still be beyond repair. They will require either surgical retrofitting or revised town planning schemes. The former is unreliable and the latter, politically suicidal and damaging to history, and these approaches, therefore, are unlikely to be successful.
• Lack of political will: People across time and space have been in denial of such threats and, therefore, we lack political will to execute such transformations. Earthquakes have not been seen as a fatal threat until they are.

• After the 2001 Bhuj earthquake, for example, the Gujarat government immediately adapted new town planning schemes that widened roads and created routes for evacuation and relief work.
• The Turkish government, in denial of its own responsibility, has arrested contractors for building unsafe buildings. The same contractors who were building on the government’s watch until the earthquake hit.

Way Forward:

• Governments and policymakers ought to know better than act in a piecemeal manner. Programmes like the ongoing Urban 20 meetings are an excellent opportunity for international knowledge exchange on earthquake preparedness.
• Both the Japanese and the US delegates are a part of U20 and India must seize this opportunity to include earthquake preparedness in our U20 agenda and learn from them.
• The Delhi High Court’s directions must act as a reminder for the inclusion of an earthquake preparedness policy in urban renewal programmes such as the Smart Cities Mission. It would be unwise to wait for another earthquake to learn how to be better prepared for one.