When earthquake of level around M6.5 occur in Japan hardly claim life but if the same level will be in Indonesia, Philippines, India, Myanmar, Nepal, Pakistan, Afghanistan etc. countries will have to loss in several thousands? Bryan Walsh wrote in TIME as earthquakes are gun and structures are bullet that load on gun and fire to people. He specially focus on south central Asia about earthquake and disaster in his last article How Shoddily Constructed Buildings Become Weapons of Mass Destruction . I totally agree with his article that main problem developing countries are not focused on implementation of seismic design and building codes to public during their private building constructions, hardly they follow for just civic buildings.
Most of the structures in rural areas are still stone masonry in mud mortar, during rainy season even they are more vulnerable to collapse with wetting of mud mortar, even they are as like the stack of stones so they cant hold more tremor intensity and fall down as blow on head. Rural area people must have to aware about seismic risk and its mitigation during construction of their house, with just a small additional amount (about 10%) investment on their house they can get more safer (about double ) building. Rural settlements are also catering more population in developing countries even up to now.
The demography of the developing countries changes rapidly and now many new cities are going to form but there is no special regularities to maintain. Like in Nepal census of 2011 states 17% of population are in urban areas which are designated as municipalities but there are still some dense cities which are not even declared as municipality. If we see the housing types of Nepal 9.94% of total households live in RCC framed structures, even about 12.54% people live in RCC slab roof with mud or cement mortar wall structures.
Here is the clip of census report NEPAL 2011
Here we can see most of structures are more vulnerable than normal one with their structure types. Only type of structure is not a main reason in consideration of vulnerability level but it is also one key point.
Main causes of vulnerable structures in developing countries
We can say as mentioned above death toll is likely dependent on number of bullets that will load in gun, quality of structure is inversely proportional to quality of structure. Quality of structure means the strength of the structure which are directly related to main phase of developing structures:
- DESIGN
- CONSTRUCTION
Major problem have to face during construction stage, Every house owner is first think about immediate economic stage of him, more than 50% of them are constructing their house on loan or debt, so do not care about quality of construction just they want to finish within their expected limit of cost. They are not following as per design just for overall dimensions they will follow because overall dimensions will later check by government officials, as it like as drawing or not. Working methodology and workmanship of mason or skilled labor is directly dependent to quality even the work is going as per drawings and design.
Hence there are many uncertainties to have quality structure and all of them directly depend on individual owner of the structure. If he/she is aware and conscious about risk that structure might be bullet to his life then he can control all levels like in design and construction. Public awareness is very important for safe structures that can reduce the existence of bullets to be loaded on earthquake gun.
