Focus on disaster preparedness

Beneath the breathtaking grandeur of the mountains that straddle northern India, Pakistan and most of Central Asia lurks a force so powerful that it could flatten whole cities and bury hundreds of thousands of people in a few minutes.

From shallow but deadly localised shocks, like the ones in Afghanistan recently, to the massive quake that devastated the Indian state of Gujarat last year, seimic activity remains a real threat in the region. This is because the Indian tectonic plate is colliding with its Eurasian counterpart, an ongoing process that started roughly 50 million years ago.

But scientists and officials say governments, NGOs and UN agencies appear unprepared for such disasters. The director of Pakistan's meteorological department, Anjum Bari, told IRIN that all the countries in the area should be prepared for earthquakes because of the numerous faults in the plates deep in the ground, which have wrought massive devastation in the past. "Earthquakes are hard to predict," Bari said, "but it makes sense to be ready for a major earthquake to happen at any time."

According to Roger Bilham, a seismologist at the University of Colorado, millions of people are at risk from massive earthquakes in the Himalayas. His study, released last year, predicted that the pressure building up in the Himalayas would be uncorked by quakes of magnitude eight or even more on the Richter scale.

These quakes could hit the capital cities of Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Nepal and Pakistan - together home to well over a billion people. The report created a sensation in the Pakistani capital, Islamabad, with newspapers speculating that disaster was imminent.

Seismologists say that four such earthquakes have already taken place along the detachment fault in the past century. The quakes, respectively of magnitude 8.2 in 1897 in Assam (India); eight in 1905 in Kangra (India); 8.3 in 1934 in Bihar (India); and 8.5 in 1950, again in Assam. Each of these ruptured a different segment of the fault.

"But one segment - located between the Kangra and Bihar rupture zones - has been strangely reserved [dormant]," the director-general of Pakistan's meteorological department, Qamar-uz-Zaman Chaudhry, told IRIN. "Between 300 [about 480 km] and 500 miles [about 800 km] long, it is called the Central Himalayan Seismic Gap."

Bilham and his colleagues have warned that some 15 metres of strain motion has built up over the centuries which needs to be released into this gap, which, if it happened, would cause a huge tremor. The last major earthquake in the gap is believed to have been the one in Nepal in 1255, which killed one-third of the country's population.

Seismology is not an exact science, but disaster experts agree that vulnerable countries should be better prepared for any eventuality. "We need to mobilise efforts at the national level, at the country level, at the regional level - and for that the UN can act as a catalyst," Naunehal Shah, programme coordinator at the Focus Humanitarian Assistance NGO, told IRIN in Islamabad.

Focus, which has offices in the United States, Canada, Europe and Pakistan, is primarily concerned with Afghanistan. However, it has a disaster preparedness programme in place for northern Pakistan and eastern Tajikistan, which is being coordinated by Shah. He is also a member of the Pakistani government's newly formed National Task Force on disasters.

Shah said Focus maintained search and rescue teams in Gilgit and Chitral districts in northern Pakistan, besides having pre-positioned stockpiles of relief goods comprising blankets, food, stoves, furnace oil, tents and medical kits in 55 villages in the districts in readiness for any eventuality. "Gilgit and Chitral are more prone to natural disasters. They are frequently hit by earthquakes, cloudbursts, landslides, and similar meteorological phenomena," he said.

These areas are so remote that in the event of an emergency aid may not reach them in time even if there were huge stocks in Islamabad. This was the reasoning behind the stockpiles, Shah said, adding, however, that in the event of a major disaster, Focus on its own would not be able to do much.

"Obviously for an NGO like ours, it is really difficult to prepare for a disaster at a national level, or at the regional level," he noted. "The UN can consider to start the pre-disaster preparedness activity, either on its own or [by] helping and assisting NGOs who are already in the field," he added.

Shah cited the example of two major earthquakes in northern Afghanistan this year, in which more than a 1,000 people were killed and thousands of homes destroyed, but emergency aid reached the areas in just a few hours because everything had already been pre-positioned in nearby cities.
"Timely aid and rescue can save many lives, and this is why we are working on these aspects," he added.

Army Brig Iqbal Cheema, who heads Pakistan's National Crisis Centre, and also the National Task Force on disasters, agreed with Shah on the need for a regional as well as a national response to large-scale calamities.

"Emergency preparedness and disaster management in Pakistan is a neglected subject. It is highly unsatisfactory," Cheema told IRIN. Pakistan does not have any agency at the federal level that can coordinate a response to a major natural disaster.

"The Pakistani army always helps in case of quakes, floods or any other situation. But disaster management is a very technical subject, which should be dealt with by the professionals," he explained.

According to Shah, Pakistan is the least prepared country in the region in terms of disasters. "Pakistan is the worst off. Even small countries like Nepal are way ahead. They recognise the threat and they are alive to it," he said, pointing out that after the deadly earthquake in Gujrat Province last year, India had stepped up disaster management work.

However, he said, equipment was so inadequate in Pakistan that earlier this year a government-owned high-rise was completely burnt because the fire brigade did not have a single truck capable of hosing water higher than the 12th floor. There are only two fire trucks able to fight fires in high-rises, but only to a limited height. One is in Islamabad and the other one is in Karachi.

Cheema said the government was working on disaster preparedness, but would require a great deal of international help. "There is a requirement for a regional response, and there is a requirement for an international response," he noted.