Earthquake resilience

Prediction of an earthquake is not yet possible. Detection of earthquakes, however, keep reminding about the need to undertake frequent review of the preparedness of a country, state, district to villages and towns. Over the past one year from March 2020 to February 2021, the National Centre for Seismology under the Ministry of Earth Science reported a total of 1013 earthquake activities with magnitude 3 and above. The Central government informed the parliament that most of the earthquakes have been reported from Himalayan arc region from Northwest to Northeast, India-Myanmar region and Andaman-Nicobar region. While there is no need to press the panic button, preparedness and building awareness on safety and rescue measures are needed to mitigate earthquake impact. Devastating earthquakes of 1897 and 1950 of 8.7 magnitude in Assam and neighbouring states, ravaging earthquake of 6.8 magnitude in Sikkim in 2011 corroborate the scientific findings about the northeast region being one of the seismically highly active regions in the world. Refreshing the knowledge on past earthquakes among ever single stakeholder involved in disaster management and among the communities is important. Disruptions in normal academic activities due to COVID-19 pandemic have affected periodic awareness drive among students through conducting of rescue and safety drills. As educational institutions are gradually returning to normal activities, activities for building awareness on earthquake to be carried out in each institution can be planned. The practical experience of COVID-19 pandemic will make it easier for the students, parents, and everyone in the community to appreciate the importance of disaster preparedness against earthquake and other natural disaster and hazards and the drills seriously than before. One key lesson learnt from prevailing pandemic situation is that building resilience against disaster is vital for achieving the sustainable development goals. The lockdown period taught how to build network, share, and exchange knowledge through innovative application of digital technology. Innovative ideas of audio-visual public messaging through online mode helped generate awareness on COVID-19, importance of following the safety protocols to break the chain, flatten the pandemic curve and repose faith in scientific community for their dedicated research leading to invention of the vaccines to build immunity against the virus. Improving the medical infrastructure, creation of more intensive care units, enhancing laboratory support, augmenting health intelligence system, all these have helped build resilience and restore gradual normalcy in other day-to-day activities. The fact that the pandemic challenge is far from over even after a year is also a reminder to remain prepared for earthquakes of devastating magnitude. Students and others in the community can be motivated to leverage access to internet to make innovative multimedia public messaging on importance of earthquake preparedness. The Assam State Disaster Management Authority needs to keep residents of Guwahati city as well as other towns informed on the status of multi-storeyed buildings from the perspective of earthquake vulnerability. Rapid vertical as well as horizontal growth of the capital city often overshadow the issue of disaster management among the residents. They need to be assured that the authorities concerned including the national and state disaster response forces are well prepared to mitigate earthquake of devastating magnitude. Management of high flood situation has still remained a challenge for the state as is evident from failure to undertake adequate relief and rehabilitation measures for the affected people. It is unfortunate that the state has not been able to construct adequate number of raised platforms to provide shelter to displaced people and their livestock in areas submerged in flood waters even though there is no dearth of fund. It reflects poorly on the disaster preparedness of the state and leaves room for panic to grip the people whenever a small earthquake is also detected and reported. Failure of the state to strengthen the embankments and plug the breaches caused by waves of flood leaving lakhs of people vulnerable to flood damage and devastation speak volume about most of the disaster management plans remaining on papers and limited to departmental meetings and seminars. Cascading impact of such embankments which have outlived their utility being affected by earthquake of a devastating magnitude can be well imagined by anyone in the state. Such vulnerabilities are well known to the authorities but absence of any visible efforts by the state to address it is baffling. It is hoped that lessons learnt from challenges in management of COVID-19 pandemic will be put to best use to scale up the earthquake preparedness in Assam. Given the vulnerability from seismic point of view, the Central government also needs to play pro-active role to work together with the State government for capacity building of all stakeholders in disaster management. Accountability of every single pie allocated and released by the Central government from National and State Disaster Risk Management Funds will bring more transparency in disaster preparedness of the state.