Resh­ma Ra­goonath

T&T will be com­plete­ly dev­as­tat­ed should a mas­sive earth­quake strike since 90 per cent of our build­ings are struc­tural­ly un­safe. So said Shyankaran Lal­la, chair­man of the Na­tion­al Build­ing Code Com­mit­tee, yes­ter­day, af­ter a 3.8 mag­ni­tude earth­quake struck in the Gulf-of-Paria, off the coast of north?Trinidad.

Lal­la, in a tele­phone in­ter­view, said al­though the earth­quake was mi­nor it should be a cause for con­cern for cit­i­zens as many build­ings in T&T were not earth­quake-re­sis­tant. In fact, he said, "Nine­ty per cent of our build­ings are struc­tural­ly un­safe."

Lal­la, a qual­i­ty con­trol con­sul­tant, said T&T is not ready to face a ma­jor earth­quake and should be­gin tak­ing note of seis­mic ac­tiv­i­ty around it. "We in Trinidad are very for­tu­nate not to have a ma­jor earth­quake with loss of life. How­ev­er, we should pay at­ten­tion to these small earth­quakes to pre­pare our­selves and dis­as­ter pre­pared­ness in the event of a ma­jor earth­quake," he said.

The Na­tion­al Build­ing?Code Com­mit­tee, which Lal­la heads, was es­tab­lished in April un­der the Hous­ing Min­istry. It has been man­dat­ed to de­vel­op a na­tion­al build­ing code. Lal­la said the com­mit­tee was still await­ing Cab­i­net's ap­proval of its bud­get re­quest to be­gin prepar­ing the code which would for­malise build­ing stan­dards lo­cal­ly. He said the com­mit­tee was do­ing ground work while it awaits fund­ing. He not­ed with con­cern that re­cent­ly the Fire Ser­vices deemed sev­er­al pub­lic build­ings un­safe and shut them down.

Lal­la urged that a struc­tur­al as­sess­ment of pub­lic build­ings to be un­der­tak­en be­cause of the high fre­quen­cy of earth­quakes oc­cur­ring around the world. He point­ed to re­cent earth­quakes record­ed in Guatemala and Bur­ma as ex­am­ples that should be not­ed lo­cal­ly. "We are not 100 per cent pre­pared. There is still a lot of work to be done to come up to stan­dard.?"We need to pay at­ten­tion to these warn­ing signs that we are get­ting-and that is ex­act­ly what they are.?We have an op­por­tu­ni­ty to pre­pare our­selves for dis­as­ters.?We have wit­nessed the dam­age in Haiti.?We need to pay close at­ten­tion."

While there were no re­ports of dam­age af­ter yes­ter­day's earth­quake Lal­la said close at­ten­tion should be paid to any small cracks on build­ings. "We throw cau­tion to the wind when we see a small crack and when we have these types of events one has to check to en­sure that there is not dam­age be­cause over­look­ing a small crack could re­sult in ma­jor dam­age when an­oth­er earth­quake hap­pens,"?he said.

Dr Wal­ter Salazar, re­search fel­low in earth­quake en­gi­neer­ing and en­gi­neer­ing seis­mol­o­gy at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies Seis­mic Re­search Cen­tre said yes­ter­day's earth­quake, which was record­ed at 8.08 am, had a depth of 98 kilo­me­tres.

The earth­quake, he said, oc­curred in the sub­duc­tion zone and be­cause of its depth the shock was felt in a wide area. "We have re­ceived re­ports from Port-of-Spain, St Joseph and Diego Mar­tin. There were no re­ports from Cen­tral or South?Trinidad. It was main­ly in the north?part of T&T. It was a mi­nor earth­quake. We are in a very, very ac­tive sub­duc­tion zones. The Caribbean re­gion is one of the most ac­tive seis­mic re­gions," he said. Salazar agreed with Lal­la that T&T is not ready for a mas­sive earth­quake.

"We are not pre­pared be­cause my im­pres­sion is the qual­i­ty of con­struc­tion is not earth­quake (proof,) it is not suf­fi­cient. The qual­i­ty is low," he said. Salazar said T&T is poised for a ma­jor earth­quake since there has been a lengthy pe­ri­od from our last ma­jor record­ed earth­quake in 1766. "We would not know the ex­act time of the earth­quake. We can ex­pect a big shock in the sub­duc­tion zone every 700 years, but we on­ly have his­to­ry of 500 years. The records are too short," he said.

Salazar said the records are re­flect­ed in the qual­i­ty of con­struc­tion. "If you had more fre­quent earth­quakes you would have bet­ter qual­i­ty of con­struc­tion to pre­pare for it. We don't have it so we do not pre­pare for it,"?he added.

Lal­la agreed with this state­ment, since he said, earth­quake-proof­ing is not a ma­jor con­sid­er­a­tion in con­struc­tion lo­cal­ly.

Of­fice of Dis­as­ter Pre­pared­ness and Man­age­ment (ODPM) CEO Dr Stephen Ram­roop said while state agen­cies were pre­pared to deal with earth­quakes, cit­i­zens were not."If you ask, in your news­pa­per, 'Who has a dis­as­ter plan?' You will find that none has a dis­as­ter plan," Ram­roop said.

Joint Con­sul­ta­tive Coun­cil pres­i­dent Afra Ray­mond agreed that T&T was not ready for an earth­quake. He added that "some of our main build­ings are not built to pro­vide safe­ty in terms of earth­quake." Ray­mond point­ed to the San Fer­nan­do?Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal and Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal as two crit­i­cal build­ings that are in need of earth­quake proof­ing.

"They (the hos­pi­tal) were built in colo­nial times. They were built un­der British build­ing codes which do not cater for earth­quakes be­cause there are no earth­quakes in the British is­lands. The build­ings need to be retro-fit­ted so they can func­tion safe­ly in the event of an earth­quake," he said.

Ray­mond com­mend­ed Gov­ern­ment for es­tab­lish­ing the Na­tion­al?Build­ing?Code Com­mit­tee which would pro­duce the first legal­ly en­force­able build­ing code. He urged Gov­ern­ment to sup­port the com­mitte and "get the code fi­nalised and im­ple­ment­ed for the health and safe­ty of our cit­i­zens and the health safe­ty of our coun­try."