India has given
a massive thrust to rescue and
relief mission in quake-devastated Nepal - 'Operation Maitri' - pressing into
service 12 heavy-duty military aircraft and 18 helicopters besides opening up
four land routes to connect to Kathmandu and Pokhara valley to reach out to the
affected with men and material. The
joint Army-Air Force operation managed to evacuate 5,400 people till Monday,
including 30 foreigners, who were stuck in Nepal. Mr Narendra Modi acted swiftly without waiting
for any formal request, extending a helping hand to neighbours when most needed.
Now
getting back, it is a basic truth that earthquakes are much, much deadlier in
places where buildings are poorly constructed, unreinforced, and not designed
to withstand shaking. Kathmandu, Nepal, was a gruesome example:
observers told CNN that buildings in the city often aren't up to code. As a
result, a shallow quake easily turned the city into rubble, trapping people
underneath. The tragedy here is that
humans have the technology to reduce earthquake deaths. Vulnerable regions like
California, Japan, and Chile have taken steps to modernize their building codes
and dramatically reduce their risks over the past century.
But -
why hasn't this happened in countries like Nepal or Iran or Pakistan, where
experts have warned again and again that massive earthquakes are inevitable? This issue was raised in an important 2013 paper
in Science by Brian Tucker, founder of GeoHazards
International, which works to reduce casualties from natural disasters. Too
many countries, he argued, have been slow to take the necessary steps to
prepare for earthquakes. And thousands of people are dying as a result. Often,
Tucker points out, it's a funding problem, particularly for poorer countries.
Upgrading buildings is expensive, after all. In some cases, there might be unique
obstacles at work (in Nepal, civil unrest made the task of retrofitting even
harder). But in many areas, the biggest barriers appear to be psychological —
people aren't even thinking about preparing for earthquakes.
According to Tucker
there are host of reasons why poor
countries often fall behind on preparing for quakes:
One key area
to look at is south central Asia. More than one-quarter of the world's
population lives here — in Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, Nepal, Bhutan,
Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, and Burma. These countries also sit near the northern
edge of the Arabian and Indian tectonic plates, which are colliding up against
the southern edge of the Eurasian plates. This collision created the soaring
Himalayan mountains. But the sliding plates can also produce massive
earthquakes in the area that kill thousands of people — like the one that
devastated Nepal. This is clearly a
seismically active zone. It's hard to say exactly when and where the next
earthquake will hit, but we know big quakes are inevitable. Yet throughout the
region, buildings continue to be shoddily constructed and topple easily in
earthquakes.
Earthquake
experts Roger Bilham and Vinod Gaur took stock of this problem in a 2013 paper for
Science. In many of these countries, contractors often fail to adhere to
building codes. What's more, the building codes that do exist often only apply
to civic structures — not the places where people live. The result? In an
earthquake, these buildings collapse, and lots of people die.
Tucker says
there are a number of reasons why poorly-built buildings persist so many
earthquake-prone regions:
1) Rapid
population growth. For starters, populations are often growing extremely fast
in many developing countries — particularly as more and more people move to
cities. "When you have this tremendous demand to build hospitals, schools,
and apartment buildings, it's very difficult to build good buildings at the
rate that is needed," he says. This
was a factor in Nepal, where people were fleeing civil unrest in the
countryside and moving to cities like Kathmandu. New buildings were often
hastily built, and retrofitting became more difficult..
2) lack of money. Funding is another obvious
problem, particularly for poorer nations. Upgrading buildings, after all, is
expensive. In his paper, Tucker cited estimates that only about 1 percent of
all disaster aid actually goes to prevention.
3) Corruption
and weak governance. It's also significantly harder for countries in earthquake
zones with corruption problems to enforce their building codes.
4)
Complacency and other psychological barriers. Tucker notes that too many countries don't
take the risk of earthquakes seriously enough. This is an understandable
tendency, particularly in developing countries that often have more immediate
concerns, such as poverty or everyday pollution. "Humans respond to
threats that are personal and visible or rapidly changing," Tucker says.
"Earthquakes are examples of slow-moving problems that we just have not evolved
to respond well to."
Often, Countries
often take action only after tragedy strikes !!! - Unfortunately, it often
requires a tragedy before countries start taking the threat of earthquakes
seriously. In his 2013 paper, Tucker examines Chile and Haiti as a stunning
exercise in contrasts. In 1960, a 9.5-magnitude earthquake struck Chile, after
which the country embarked on a massive earthquake-safety program and enforcing
new building codes. By contrast, Haiti did nothing during this period, lulled
into complacency by a lack of seismic activity and hampered by constant
political unrest and extreme poverty. The
results? In early 2010, two similar earthquakes struck the two countries. Only
about 0.1 percent of Chileans affected by the 8.8-magnitude earthquake died. By
contrast, 11 percent of Haitians affected by a 7.0-magnitude earthquake with
similar shaking died. "In other words," Tucker wrote, "Haitian
buildings appear to be 100 times as lethal as Chilean buildings." It's a
stunning illustration of the value in preparation — which, sadly, often doesn't
happen.
According to
Tucker, the practical steps are : First,
Nepal should begin retrofitting schools. Not only is spending money on schools
politically popular, but it also helps educate schoolchildren that earthquakes
aren't a purely "natural" disaster and their risks can be reduced
greatly. Second — and this was
surprising —that foreign-owned luxury hotels are often a good place to start
reinforcing buildings. The reason? It creates incentives for competitors to also
start reinforcing their hotels. What's more, it provides jobs for masons and
architects, who learn how to build buildings that are up to code. That, in
turn, can have positive spillover effects elsewhere.
That said,
it's far better for countries to start preparing for earthquakes before tragedy
strikes. And on that score, our current method of preparing for earthquakes
seems to be failing. Tucker suggests that earthquake experts may need to start
trying public-health-style campaigns — "similar to the ones that get
people to use seat belts or quit smoking."
In his 2013 paper, Tucker noted that an earthquake campaign would have
to have many facets — not just information, but also incentives to increase
preparedness. "Publishing statistics on the increasing occurrence of lung
cancer and auto fatalities was not sufficient; nor were photos of black,
leathery lungs on cigarette packages or photos in driver education movies of
gory accident scenes. Taxes, fines, and opprobrium were used. ... The
earthquake risk reduction community might find effective lessons, models, and
tactics from studying those public health campaigns." But something needs
to change. Twice as many people died from earthquakes in the decade between
2001 and 2012 as died in the previous two decades combined, despite a variety
of campaigns to reduce earthquake risk. And those deaths are only likely to
increase in the future, as more people are expected to move to cities near seismically
active areas.
Foreign
policy experts often focus on problems like violence, terrorism, and
instability, but the reality is that disasters are far more destructive.* Between
1980 and 2000, disasters like earthquakes, tsunamis, and floods killed roughly
1.5 million people and directly affected at least 2.3 billion people worldwide.
Economic losses from these catastrophes average between $250 billion and $300
billion per year, a number that's expected to increase in the future. And the
impact falls disproportionately on poor countries. Clearly, there's a
tremendous demand for disaster relief. So it's a huge problem that disaster aid
from wealthier countries rarely lines up with actual needs.
fallen Kathmandu
~~and the
worst disasters do not always get the most aid !!! - sadly,
disaster relief is heavily influenced by politics and media coverage. More than the affected countries not seeking
globally, donor countries often have
their own political interests in mind. Media
coverage can be arbitrary — but it seems to influence aid decisions. In a 2007 study, Strömberg and Thomas
Eisensee examined 5,212 disasters to see what factors affected media attention
to these events. Using data from the Vanderbilt Television News Archive, the
authors examined the level of coverage of each event on nightly newscasts in
the US. First, they found that other big stories can crowd out disaster
coverage. For every 2.4 extra minutes the networks spent on their top three
stories, the probability that they would cover a disaster fell by 4 percent.
They also found that media was more likely to cover disasters with lots of
deaths — "if it bleeds, it leads." A tenfold increase in the number
of people killed by a disaster increased the likelihood of news coverage by 10
percent. By contrast, a tenfold increase in the number of people affected by a
disaster only generated a 3 percent increase in coverage. Media focus on some disasters over others
isn't entirely random. The type, scale, and location of a disaster all matter.
At a
geographical level, Strömberg notes that
"to have the same chance of receiving relief, a country at the other side
of the earth must have 160 times as many fatalities as a country at zero
distance." This type of neighborhood bias has clear ramifications for
countries in the developing world. Compared with disasters in Europe, those
occurring in Asia-Pacific and Africa garner 36 percent and 21 percent less
relief aid, respectively.
The
above is majorly reproduced from Vox.com – taken together, this research paints a bleak picture.
While those of us in the developed world may like to believe that our
governments provide humanitarian aid on the basis of need, the evidence tells a
different story. More importantly, developed countries are better off and are
probably less affected by a disaster of the same magnitude !!!
With regards – S.
Sampathkumar
28th Apr
2015.
PS : Vox is an American news website run by Vox Media. It was founded by Ezra Klein and launched in April 2014. The New York Times described Vox Media as "a technology company that produces media" rather than its inverse, associated with "Old Media". I found the article to be relevant and interesting and circulating to my group of friends too.
