Quakes may improve India’s seismic readiness

Understanding Fault Lines

• Fault lines are unstable and unpredictable phenomena that lie between major tectonic plates.

• These lines can slumber for decades or centuries, but their presence can be triggered by earthquakes.

The Himalayan Region

• The Himalayan region, shaped by India’s Indian Plate and Eurasian Plate, is prone to earthquakes.

• The earthquakes in the region have caused significant damage and dread, but there has been little national action or planning.

Infrastructure Development in the Himalayan Region

• Infrastructure development in the region must consider the impending threat of a major earthquake and associated costs.

• Adherence to existing building codes can limit the inevitable damage, but adherence is not enough.

Precautionary Measures

• The government, not the people, must take meaningful precautions.

• The state must provide for state expense on fore-closing and rolling back engineering enterprises that weaken the earth’s crust.

• New mapped-plans for the protection of highly vulnerable structures and assessing the seismic status of high follow-on secondary risk structures are needed.

• A seismic building insurance scheme should be set up, and the costs of rescue, temporary sheltering, and rehabilitation of dislocated populations should be assessed.

• Collaboration with countries that are experts in earthquake anticipation through sensors and architecture should be fast-forwarded.

The Good News

• India is ahead of the big seismic shock that has been anticipated by seismologists.

• The country has an institutional advantage in the form of a Ministry of Earth Sciences and a Disaster Management Authority.

• The’motto’ is that earthquakes are not to be prevented, but they can be prepared for.