When the Earth Quakes, What Could We Do?

At one time or another mortal man has worshiped everything on the face of the earth, including himself. He has also worshiped about everything imaginable in the sky and beneath the surface of the earth. Primitive man feared all manifestations of power; he worshiped every natural phenomenon he could not comprehend. The observation of powerful natural forces, such as storms, floods, earthquakes, landslides, volcanoes, fire, heat, and cold, greatly impressed the expanding mind of man. The inexplicable things of life are still termed "acts of God" and "mysterious dispensations of Providence."

[The Urantia Book 85:0.4]

Earthquakes have been happening ever since our earth acquired its solidified lithosphere floating over the molten liquid mass underneath. Had it been a single piece of shell covering the whole surface, perhaps these frightening episodes of quakes would not have terrorized the human species that evolved to dwell on the surface!

But unfortunately, the solidified crust exists as cracked in to a few pieces which our geo-scientists call as the tectonic plates. These tectonic plates keep moving a few inches every year over the molten liquid rubbing and pressing against each other on the cracked edges, applying great forces. At times, the great rubbing forces cause the plates to make way suddenly, causing the sudden vibrational release of destructive energy a few hundred miles across. That causes some parts of the affected tectonic plate to shake and vibrate for a few seconds. That vibration that is felt over the land and sea is called earth quake.

The vibration has the highest vigor near to the point where the plates rubbed each other. Our scientists call it as the focus point of the quake. Normally, the focus of an earthquake is a few kilometers below the surface. The point directly above the focus on the ground is called the epicentre. Epicentre is a place which is easy for us to identify. The force of vibrations arising out of a quake is measured in terms of a unit called the Richter units using the Richter magnitude scale. When there is no quake vibration, the Richter unit is zero. When it is the highest, its value is 10. It is measured by an instrument called the seismometer or seismograph.

An earth quake of magnitude upto say about Richter 4 are not normally felt by us. Above 5 richter, earthquakes are felt and can cause damage. As the scale goes up, the destructive power also goes up many times.

That is because the Richter scale is logarithmic. The magnitude of a quake which is just one unit more is actually ten times more vigorous. For example, a quake of Richter-5 is ten times forceful than a quake at Richter-4. 

When some parts of the tectonic plates shake as a consequence of their destructive mutual rubbing to throw us away as if the irritated elephant shakes its body to throw out its disliked mahout, what could we possibly do to escape from that momentary anger of mother earth? 

When it actually shakes with all those megaton energy from underneath, we are indeed helpless. It is only chance and pure luck that you and me come out unhurt from any such episode of natural calamity. 

The devastating earthquake that flattened Nepal on the 25th April 2015 forenoon was one such episode! 

It was a holiday for me and I was relaxing on the sofa. I had just finished reading the newspapers and was thinking to put on the TV to scan the scores of channels for something new. 

The time was just approaching 12 Noon and I got the first signs of the tremble. I knew instantaneously that it was an earthquake because I had experienced similar quakes in similar situations in Ranchi a couple of times in the past couple of years.

Just outside, the public school nearby was celebrating some annual event with all the voices of the function beamed out through rented professional loudspeakers as high noises at 150 decibels! That made all other voices and noises at home hardly audible.

Yet I could somehow call my wife doing some moring chores, who obviously had failed to recognize the earth's obvious swings and to make her cautious of the quake which had by now become more obvious. Standing on the floor with the mikes blasting outside, she was unable to recognize the building shaking in slow swings. At first she even argued with me and ridiculed me for my quake imagination.

But then I convinced her to sit on the chair nearby and as she sat down, she too was feeling the swings. The swings by this time had become more obvious as we could watch our flower pots and fans swinging. There were occasional rattlings from the doors and the windows. 

We did not get panic as the quake was not felt so powerful for us to jump out. Yet I noticed one thing. The quake was still causing my sofa to swing and it had not yet stopped. Unusually longer duration. It had been shaking for more than a minute now, perhaps almost two. Fortunately, it ended by that time.

We noticed some of our neighbours moving out of their homes as they felt the tremblings of the earth. We wanted to know more about the quake and put on the TV to scan the national channels for getting some information.

In another five minutes or so, the channels became alive with breaking news captions. The tremors have been felt all over north India. But they took some time to pin-point the epicenter and the quake magnitude, apparently because the Indian administrators in an administrative goof-up has made the country's existing earth-quake monitoring facility at IIT-Roorkee dysfunctional. Any way, the media announced the magnitude and epicentre of the quake sometime later. Its magnitude was confirmed at Richter-7.8 and epicentre at some secluded mountaneous village near the capital of Nepal, Kathmandu.

As the days passed, we are learning more and more about the human tragedy unfolding in Nepal from the devastating earthquake of April, 25th. The death toll counts kept rising every day and now it is has become almost countless as it crossed the 10,000 mark. Due to the inadequate infrastructure and administrative system in this part of the world, we may never ever actually know the facts.

Human Tragedy in Nepal 

[Courtesy: the Telegraph. Visit telegraph site for more]
[More Pictures in Outlook India ]

But the moot question that comes to my mind is this. Could we have possibly reduced the casualties and the damage from this kind of an earthquake? Could we have taken some preventive steps?

While natural calamities are often beyond human managerial abilities when it happens quite unexpectedly, there are a few wise precautions that we could have adopted to mitigate the huge loss of lives and property. 

Our geoscientists have found out the regions where the possibility of tectonic activities and earthquake magnitudes are high. Nepal and many areas of North India lie above tectonic fault lines where earthquake possibilities are high. 

Earthquakes cause deaths not because it causes direct deaths as in the case of lightnings. Earthquake causes death indirectly. The strong quakes cause unsafe buildings and structures to collapse. The buildings and structures when collapse kill people and entrap people to be killed slowly afterwards.

Buidings that are made of stone and brick masonry work on improvised foundations are the ones that collapse easily in an earth quake. In turn such buildings cause the highest human casualties. Poorly constructed concrete and RCC structures are also equally damaging because they cannot withstand the lateral shaking that earthquakes cause. 

Earthquake inflicted damages would be less, if the buildings are of light weight with some flexibility to withstand shaking. Properly engineered pre-fabricated buildings could provide much relief in this context as compared to conventional insitu building construction. Some time ago I had written about the benefits of prefabricated housing as a very viable and affordable housing option.

Pre-fab homes homes and buildings are constructed using light weight, durable and high strength factory made components such as wall panels, modular rooms, cabins, roofing, pre-engineered structurals that could be assembled at site to form large homes and buildings. They are with non-detachable joints that allow lateral shakes and resist collapse. Materials such as steel, aluminium, toughened glass, re-inforced plastics, ferrocement, wood, bamboo and other composites are used for making pre-fab building modules and components.

Prefabricated buildings are comparitively inexpensive and much quicker to construct. For example, this Chinese pre-fab manufacturer has recently completed a 57 storied skyscraper in just 19 days taking full advantage of the prefab building technology.

In the USA, an architect named Angus Macdonald, has developed the patented ferrocement prefab technology now known as the am-cor technology which offers earthquake resistant pre-fab buildings with good aesthetics. Entrepreneurs and investers from India can perhaps negotiate to bring this modern building construction technology to this part of the world.

A Villa made using am-cor pre-fab ferrocement technology

[Courtsey: am-cor inc. website]

It may not be possible for people to change their conventional homes. But the damaged homes and buildings, in my considered opinion, could well be renovated to reasonable earthquake safety by ferrocement cladding.

When the rehabilitation and reconstructions programmes are undertaken, conventional building constrution methods in the earth quake prone areas should be avoided and preference should be given to pre-fab buildings with earthquake safety features.

Let us hope the concerned authorities and people involved in planning such things would use their skills and expertise wisely in the days to come.

At this juncture, let all those of us who are miraculously spared from the disaster, stand united with those unfortunate ones who are facing the tragedy in Nepal and parts of North India.  

Uttarakhand Flood of 16th June 2013 : Would Good Engineering Practices Have Reduced the Losses ?

When the news of the heavy rains and the subsequent land slide calamities that rocked India, especially the north Indian states of Uttarakhand and Himachal Pradesh a couple of days ago, with the horror stories still pouring in, some memories of my experiences in those areas more than three decades ago flashed in my mind. Thousands are now believed to be either dead or missing in this worst natural disaster in the recent times. And this tragedy is likely to cause lingering pains to thousands of families across India crying and searching for their near and dear ones. 

As a quick response of responsibility, Google has started a special service for locating and reporting the details of the missing persons -you may click this Person Finder link for more details: 2013 Uttrakhand Floods. Against this backdrop I find it most unfortunate to observe the much publicized Prime Minister's National Relief Fund Donate Online website  a non-functional one with invalid server certificate,  today ! 

Now coming back to my memories. The period was late in the Nineteen Seventies when I was a post graduate chemical engineering student at Roorkee University, the successor of the first engineering college that started functioning any where in the British Commonwealth regions under the British empire way back in 1853 as Thomason College of Civil Engineering  which later got rechristened as the Indian Institute of Technology, Roorkee.

Being passed my degree in chemical engineering from the only college that offered that stream of study in the south Indian state of Kerala in those days, the Government Engineering College, Trichur, there was no reason for me to go to the plains of north west India for further studies. I could have done that elsewhere much conveniently. But my decision to try Roorkee was in a way purposeful. Two years at Roorkee would give me enough opportunity to explore some of the mountainous Himalayan terrains of North India.

Those were some of the memorable days of my life. There were a few adventure loving friends. Mr Ujjagger Singh Kooner pursuing his ME in Mechanical Engineering and Mr Donn Treese from USA pursuing his masters in Architectural Engineering were my hostel mates in Jawahar Bhawan who used to be my adventure and sight seeing companions on many occasions. The Himalayan Explorer's Club of the University also provided much help for me to understand the problems of life in the mountain terrains of Tehri Garhwal  and adjoining regions situated then in undivided Uttar Pradesh State and now in Uttarakhand State. A week's training in ice craft and mountaineering in Nehru Institute of Mountaineering in Uttarkashi was a good experience which I still cherish.

These Himalayan ranges are the sources of streams that make up the great north Indian rivers such as the Ganga (River Ganges)  and its main tributory the Yamuna that make the north Indian states of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar fertile. Being a nation of nearly a billion people following Hinduism, it not a surprise that the Himalayan ranges have many revered Hindu shrines and worship places where a devote Hindu would like to visit as a pilgrim. The Ganga water is holy and the source of the Ganga (Gangotri)  and Yamuna (Yamunotri) are holy places making them most desired locations in the Uttarakhand regions of the Himalayas for the religious tourists. Besides the entire routes to these places in the mountains offer awesome treat to nature lovers and adventurists alike. Visit of people to these places has been a regular affair for decades. While few hundred people visited these places every year a couple of decades before, perhaps millions visit now. Better roads and affordability of good vehicles and mushrooming of hundreds of guest houses along the valleys and hill slopes have made such a transformation.

During the time of my visit to these places in the late Seventies, the roads connecting Uttarkashi , Harsil, Rudraprayag  and Kedarnath were broken at many places due to land slides. I remember trekking for kilometers and taking some help from the Indian paramilitary personnel from ITBP, BSF, etc to cover some distances in the motor-able patches of the roads on their vehicles. I had seen the difficult work of the BRO in repairing the difficult mountain roads that had caved in due to landslides at many places. Travelling in those roads and trails running by the slopes of the mountains make one feel highly vulnerable to various kinds of potential dangers like falling stones, fall, etc., etc. If one gets physically incapacitated by any means, an evacuation to a safer place would not be easy if the roads become cut or isolated due to landslides or caving ins. . Helicopters of the military organizations would be the only solution in such a situation. I had faced such a situation of helplessness when I caught a mild fever while I was on trek beyond Uttarkashi. My stamina all of a sudden got drained out that I was incapable of trekking any more ! Fortunately, some friendly paramilitary men helped me by giving shelter, medicine and transport when it was needed the most !

While I visited these places, the travelers and visitors in these places were much less as compared to the situation now. But I can visualize the horror if you get stranded in any of these places. I remember getting stranded in a mountain village in Himachal Pradesh north east of Shimla  during a pleasant season when the road connection got suddenly broken on another occasion during that time when me and my American friend Donn ventured in to a personal adventure trip. We had to walk nearly 50 km taking two days to get the public transport to Shimla ! Fortunately, the weather was nice and we had my uncle who worked there in the Public Works Department as our guide. Imagine the horror in a situation when the weather is hostile and you are left to fetch for yourself !

But the world has moved much ahead in the last three decades. The roads of Uttarakhand has become a bit wider perhaps to accommodate more vehicles. But, regrettably nothing more to prevent those roads from getting damaged extensively due to floods, earthquakes or landslides has been implemented. There could have been alternate routes at many places to give the people some option when some long stretches of road become isolated. The building constructions along the river side and the slopes could have been with better and safe engineering designs. There could have been more helicopter landing pads. The unstable mountain slopes could have been strengthened with appropriate landslide prevention methods.

When we talk about landslide prevention methods, it is now common knowledge that there are many methods the engineering fraternity around the globe practice and implement. For example see this wikipedia article on landslide mitigation .

Of these, the most important in my opinion, is the provision of good water drainage systems for both surface water as well as sub soil water. In the roads in India, this one aspect is the most neglected one with improvisation doing the major role than well- thought- about engineering designs. An unstable soil surface , such as the sloppy terrains of Uttarakhand, would slide out when rain water seeps in and accumulate below the surface. There are many ways to stabilize those slopes along the roads and below the roads and to strengthen those roads from total damage as was seen this time. The towns in the valleys and ravines also could have been saved to a greater extent, had some authorities thought of such eventualities with the help of engineering experts well in advance.

Perhaps for reasons well known to them, the authorities found it convenient to keep these roads in a perpetual state of damage and damage mitigation state rather than adopting sound engineering practices to build safe and stabilized roads and infrastructure. I am not sure !

Landslides due to floods, earthquakes and rains are not something new to Uttarakhand. But hopefully, this kind of a tragedy could have been mitigated of its severity with the adoption of sound engineering practices.

Let us hope the authorities would consider it something important to implement in the future !

My heartfelt sympathies with all those affected families and persons!


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