Earthquake Safety

Editor’s Note: Earthquake Safety Measures

Natural calamities occur out of the blue and almost always leave us absolutely devastated. Accounts of destructive natural disasters, especially earthquakes can be found throughout the history of human civilization. With the recent news of earthquakes shaking the planet, it is high time we assemble all our wits and look for ways to prevent any further loss of life and property. Disaster prevention centers are constantly trying to better their strategies against earthquakes for the past several decades. So what are some ways to minimize, if not completely expunge, destruction from earthquakes. Let us take a hard look at earthquake safety.

Structural Collapse during calamities

Most deaths are due to structure collapse during an earthquake, as the saying goes – Earthquakes don’t kill people, but weak buildings do. Weak structures can collapse on their own, even without an earthquake or other natural calamities. For instance, it has been a year since the unfortunate collapse incident at Chintels Paradiso in Gurgaon where two people lost their lives. This incident also brought out the lacuna with respect to safety of high-rise buildings in India.

Some of them are listed below:

1. The Resident Welfare Associations (RWA) of high-rise complexes do not have copies of structural drawings. Neither have the developers of these projects handed over structural drawings, nor have the RWA’s asked for them.
2. Over the years no structural audit of their buildings have been conducted by the RWA, they are not even aware that they are mandated to do so as per law, per the provisions of National Building Code 2016. No agency is presently overseeing to enforce these provisions. There are two types of structural audits that can happen, the first being the visual inspection and the second a detailed design review and structural audit.
3. The overall structural quality of many high-rise buildings can be said to be poor. They lack proper planning and as a result are susceptible to damage and collapse.
4. When I had inspected Tower-J of Chintels Paradiso in Gurgaon in April 2022, I had found multiple deep cracks in many of the floor slabs in the building. It was observed that the floor slabs had lost most of their load carrying capacity and there were high chances of the floor giving out and causing a massive accident. These were photographed and appended in a written report that was submitted.

Prevention is Better than Cure

With the recent news of massive earthquakes and the damage and destruction they have caused in Turkey and Syria, it is time that we take a comprehensive look at the status of earthquake safety and the immediate actions that need to be undertaken.

Whenever an earthquake or tsunami takes thousands of innocent lives,
a shocked world talks of little else.

Anne M. Mulcahy, Former Chairperson and CEO, Xerox Corporation

Classification of Buildings

To prevent earthquake damage, the very basic step is essential – to understand how buildings are classified.

There are essentially four sets of classifications for different kinds of buildings.

First, the buildings are classified based on whether they are ‘fully constructed’ or ‘under construction’.

The second categorization classifies them as essential/important buildings or normal buildings.

The third way to look at them is by the type of construction, materials/methods used like steel buildings, reinforced concrete buildings, brick/stone masonry buildings, wood buildings and so on.

The fourth and the most important way to classify is how the building survives an earthquake, does it collapse/ not collapse and will it be immediately useable or repairable after the earthquake.

Architecting a strong structure

It is also important to understand the type of professionals who are involved in designing buildings.

There’s the architect having a degree in architecture and who is responsible for the aesthetics and functionality of a building.

Then we have the structural engineer who has a degree in structural engineering and is responsible for the structural safety of the building against earthquakes and other disasters. A structural engineer designs all the structural components of the buildings like the beams, columns, shear walls, foundations and so on.

Strengthening existing structures

New buildings can be designed to any level of safety that the owner desires or the laws warrant. It is also important to know that existing buildings can also be strengthened so that they do not collapse, and hold well during an earthquake.

The ways to do it are by adding Reinforced Cement Concrete Bands (RCC Bands) in un-reinforced masonry buildings, adding shear walls, by Jacketing all the columns and beams, adding base Isolators to a building or by adding Dampers in a building.

Implementing Design Codes

Buildings are designed using the design codes which are issued time to time by the Bureau of Indian Standards. The usual international practice is to update building codes every three years. However, this has not yet been the case in India. It is essential that the Government provides adequate funding to ensure this.

Also, the following design codes yet do not exist in India which leaves a serious vulnerability in the system:

1. Specialized design codes for designing operational/immediate occupancy hospitals.
2. Code to evaluate the existing performance of building.
3. Code to categorize buildings into operational, immediate occupancy, life safety and collapse prevention.
4. Specialized design code for designing buildings with dampers and base Isolators.
5. Code to comprehensively retrofit buildings to a given performance standard.
6. Performance evaluation of high-rise buildings.

Safety Awareness and Strengthening The Basic Fabric of the Society

India is a vast country with extreme diversity, as we all know. It definitely won’t be easy to implement all of these in one go, but all stakeholders including the government, private companies and citizens must come together to enable a safer living situation for everyone.

Many things need to be taken up by the authorities, so what we can do as citizens? We must know how to keep ourselves safe in case an earthquake does strike; and take preventive measures to ensure the structural safety of the buildings where we live and work.

Education and knowledge go a long way, so let us spread the word and enhance our collective awareness.

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About The Author

Sandeep Shah is the Managing Director of Miyamoto Design and Engineering Consultants. He has more than 33 years of engineering experience. His engineering career started with him getting commissioned in the Corps of Engineers, Indian Army in 1989. While in Army he participated in the Kargil War, UN operations in Sierra Leone, Op-Parakaram and anti insurgency operations Op-Rakshak.

After leaving Army in 2003, he did his Masters in Earthquake and Civil Engineering Dynamics from University of Sheffield U.K. and in 2004-05 and started his engineering consultancy. He has been instrumental in introducing and promoting many advanced and latest earthquake protection technologies in India to include dampers, tuned mass dampers and earthquake alarm systems. His specialization is performance based design using dampers, buildings that stay functional even after a major earthquake.

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