Quake contingency plan for Kabul amid tremors

The Afghan Red Crescent Society (ARCS) has drawn up a contingency plan to tackle the potential humanitarian consequences of strong earthquakes as tremors jolted parts of the country four times in less than a month.



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The latest shake was felt in Kabul and northeastern areas of the country at around 3:30am local time on 18 January. A 6.2 magnitude earthquake rocked the same areas on 4 January, according to the US Geological Survey. Tremors of 5.9 magnitudes were also reported on 3-5 January.



No casualties have been reported to date from any of these quakes, but about 15 houses in the northeastern Badakhshan Province were damaged on 4 January, the ARCS said.



“The contingency plan has been prepared to respond to post-quake emergencies in time and effectively, and to alleviate the resulting human suffering,” Abdul Rahman Kalantary, ARCS’s director of disaster response, told IRIN in Kabul.



The plan is currently only designed for Kabul, the capital, but could be replicated in other quake-prone provinces in the future, Kalantary said.



Preparations for strong quakes



The ARCS says it has over 24,000 volunteers across the country, but a lack of adequate resources has been a major challenge in its quake contingency programme.



The contingency plan is designed for quakes beyond magnitude six on the Richter scale, a level at which human and property damage are usually significant.



“The plan is divided into several parts, including relief delivery, rescue operations, coordination and logistics,” said Kalantary, adding training of volunteers was also part of the exercise.



“If quakes destroy everything - including hospitals, warehouses and electricity and water grids - we must be able to set up an emergency operation centre from where we will initiate and coordinate response activities,” he said.



Government officials said there were no strategic and reliable sites in the country where food, medicine and other essential items could be stored for emergency response but gave assurances that they would be quick to act in the event of a natural disaster.



“We have emergency kits for water decontaminating which we would distribute in case of need,” Abdullah Fahim, spokesman for the Ministry of Health, told IRIN.



Widespread vulnerabilities



Parts of central, northern and northeastern Afghanistan are prone to seismic waves. This natural vulnerability has been exacerbated by prevalent illegal and substandard construction, weak essential infrastructure and widespread lack of awareness on the risks of earthquakes and other natural disasters.



Kabul and other major cities around the country suffer rapid and unregulated urbanisation with mushrooming substandard housing, the Ministry of Urban Development has said.



Already, many of the estimated four million residents of Kabul do not have reliable access to water, electricity and medical services. Any extended disruptions in access to these services could prove catastrophic, experts warn.



On 4 February 1998, Afghanistan suffered its worst earthquake in the northeastern province of Takhar where a 6.1 magnitude quake killed some 3,650 people, destroyed thousands of houses and displaced tens of thousands of people, according to the ARCS.



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