- Were lessons learnt from the last one?
The saving grace of the earthquake which struck Azad Jammu and Kashmir on Tuesday was that it was not as bad as the one in 2009, but it was still destructive, as the casualty figures say: at least 23 dead and hundreds injured. Admittedly, in 2005, about 87,000 people were killed, in what was the worst earthquake since the 1935 Quetta earthquake. Also, at 7.6 Richter Scale, it was greater than Tuesday’s, which was 5.8. This time around, the epicentre of the earthquake was the boundary between AJK and Pakistan, and the city mainly hit was Mirpur. The last time, though the brunt was in AJK, Punjab and KP were also severely hit. However, this time, it is AJK that has absorbed most of the damage. This earthquake, like the previous one, was caused by the collision of the Eurasian and Indian tectonic plates. This friction, over prolonged periods of time, has given birth to the Himalayas. The poor joke, by PM’s Information Adviser Dr Firdous Ashiq Awan, about the earthquake being a sign of the tabdeeli being brought about by the PTI government, was also bad science, apart from being an uncalled-for mockery of the victims and in very poor taste.
Perhaps the main concern at present is not so much rehabilitation of the victims and reconstruction of infrastructure, as the relief of the survivors, who have suddenly been rendered shelterless, and that too when the monsoon is not yet over. It should be remembered that the earthquake has struck in an area where rainfall is heavier than elsewhere, and victims are thus at greater risk. This earthquake will also prove a test for the Earthquake Reconstruction and Rehabilitation Authority, which was created in October 2005 to handle the effects of the earthquake that year, and has handled work on the after-effects of the 2013 Awaran earthquake. While it will be up to the National and Provincial Disaster Management Authorities to handle the immediate aftermath, it will be ERRA on which the long-term recovery of the affected area will really depend. Meanwhile, those areas that are not directly affected should be checked to find out if buildings have been made earthquake-proof. These earthquakes should show us that we are in a seismically unstable area, and it is not a matter of if but when, for the next.
