Resh­ma Ra­goonath

Di­rec­tor of the St Au­gus­tine Cam­pus of the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies' Seis­mic Re­search Cen­tre Dr Richard Robert­son has called for the speedy for­mu­la­tion of a na­tion­al build­ing code to en­sure all build­ings are earth­quake re­silient.In fact, he said, T&T sim­ply could not af­ford to de­lay any fur­ther on the code be­cause sci­en­tists have warned that if a ma­jor earth­quake were to strike lo­cal­ly there would be mass de­struc­tion and loss of lives.

In a phone in­ter­view, Robert­son said, "In the ab­sence of a build­ing code there is a lot of lee­way for peo­ple to con­struct things in any way. You need reg­u­la­tions."Robert­son said in a news re­lease last week that re­cent re­search in­di­cat­ed that eco­nom­ic dam­age of US$5 bil­lion and US$6 bil­lion, re­spec­tive­ly, for Port-of-Spain and San Fer­nan­do could oc­cur as a re­sult of a mag­ni­tude 7.5 earth­quake.

His plea for ur­gency might be of lit­tle ef­fect as it has been two years since the ap­point­ment of the Na­tion­al Build­ing Code Com­mit­tee and funds are yet to be re­leased for the for­mu­la­tion of the code, though Cab­i­net ap­proved $12 mil­lion for the for­mu­la­tion of the code last year. Robert­son said that should be ad­dressed."We are say­ing that the stum­bling blocks need to be moved out of the way so that we could pro­ceed. The longer it takes for us to pro­ceed in this re­gard, the longer it takes to get to the stage where T&T is re­silient.

All the de­vel­op­ment we have hap­pen­ing now, it would be in jeop­ardy in the fu­ture if we do not get these reg­u­la­tions in place, get them en­forced and get peo­ple com­mit­ted to mov­ing for­ward," he lament­ed.Robert­son said the build­ing code was re­al­ly one el­e­ment of a com­pre­hen­sive strat­e­gy need­ed to build re­silience.He said there were lines of ev­i­dence that sug­gest­ed that T&T could have a large po­ten­tial­ly dam­ag­ing seis­mic event which could set it coun­try back.

"Every day that we have not moved for­ward is a day longer than nec­es­sary," he said.He said, in the re­lease, the cur­rent es­ti­mates of seis­mic haz­ard sug­gest­ed the like­li­hood of be­ing killed by an earth­quake in the next 50 years was com­pa­ra­ble to the like­li­hood of be­ing mur­dered in that same pe­ri­od, giv­en the cur­rent mur­der rate and cur­rent es­ti­mate of the seis­mic haz­ard."We need ap­pro­pri­ate build­ing codes backed by leg­is­la­tion. Earth­quakes do not kill peo­ple, build­ings do," Robert­son said

He said T&T was in an area of high earth­quake ac­tiv­i­ty for the Caribbean and sci­en­tif­ic ev­i­dence in­di­cat­ed that the is­lands were like­ly to ex­pe­ri­ence a large-mag­ni­tude earth­quake soon­er rather than lat­er.

Chair­man: com­mit­tee wait­ing on funds

Build­ing code com­mit­tee chair­man Shyankaran Lal­la told the T&T Guardian via SMS, the com­mit­tee was still wait­ing on funds. He said the code was even more crit­i­cal now that the Plan­ning and Fa­cil­i­ta­tion Act would come in­to ef­fect.The act, he said, could not work with­out a build­ing code. "The un­due de­lay in the dis­burse­ment of fund­ing for the de­vel­op­ment of a na­tion­al build­ing code is de­lay­ing the de­liv­ery of the code which sets min­i­mum stan­dards for the pro­tec­tion of the health safe­ty and wel­fare of our cit­i­zens," he said.

Lal­la said the SRC kept warn­ing the coun­try of an im­pend­ing dis­as­ter and it should be tak­en se­ri­ous­ly."Haiti failed to heed warn­ings of seis­mol­o­gists and we all know what the re­sult was. We are for­tu­nate to have the op­por­tu­ni­ty to re­duce the risk as­so­ci­at­ed with dis­as­ters by de­vel­op­ing and en­forc­ing the re­quire­ments of a build­ing code."We must take ac­tion with a sense of ur­gency be­fore it is too late," he de­clared.

Min­is­ter: Govt com­mit­ted to code

Hous­ing and Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Min­is­ter Dr Roodal Mooni­lal as­sured that Gov­ern­ment was com­mit­ted to the for­mu­la­tion of a na­tion­al build­ing code.He ex­pressed con­fi­dence that the 2014 dead­line for the code would be met."We con­tin­ue to work with the Build­ing Code com­mit­tee. We have had some in­sti­tu­tion­al dif­fi­cul­ties among the state part­ners in re­cent times which led to a slow­ing down of the work, but I am as­sured that by next week we will be on full steam and in­tend to meet our 2014 dead­line," he said via text mes­sage.