38 Indian cities lie in high risk seismic zones | Fusion - WeRIndia

At least thirty eight Indian cities belong to very risky seismic zones and nearly sixty percent of the subcontinental solid ground is at risk of earthquakes. With rare exceptions, like the Delhi railway system, India’s hastily-built cities are prone to catastrophic destruction from earthquakes.

The earthquake that devastated Nepal on Saturday and shook northern India, damaging buildings as far apart as Agra and Siliguri, was expected by geologists, who have warned of a lot of Himalayan earthquakes caused by the growing pressures of the sub-continent grinding into the Asian dry land.

Very few buildings in India meet the standards prescribed in “Indian Standards Criteria for Earthquake Resistant Design” – first printed by the Bureau of Indian Standards in 1962, the most recent revision being in 2005. These aren’t enforced, thus virtually nobody is aware of such earthquake-resistant standards and pointers for home-owners exist.

Nothing has modified since 1993, once a comparatively milder earthquake of magnitude 6.4 in Maharashtra’s Latur district killed nearly 10,000 individuals in what was thought-about a non-seismic zone. Most died as a result of shoddily made homes collapsed at the primary major shake, as they did in Gujarat eight years later. Hopefully better standards will be enforced for the future.

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