Resh­ma Ra­goonath

Con­struc­tion of Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar's prized $1.5 bil­lion Cou­va Chil­dren's Hos­pi­tal is in jeop­ardy as seis­mic and struc­tur­al ex­perts have called for all work there to be abort­ed.This is be­cause the hos­pi­tal and mul­ti-train­ing fa­cil­i­ty is be­ing built near the Cen­tral Range earth­quake fault line, which ex­perts say is in dan­ger of be­ing hit by a ma­jor earth­quake of 7.5 mag­ni­tude or above.Seis­mol­o­gist Dr Joan Lutch­man, of the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI) Seis­mic Re­search Cen­tre, speak­ing with the T&T Guardian in a tele­phone in­ter­view on Wednes­day, con­firmed that the present lo­ca­tion of the hos­pi­tal is in "close prox­im­i­ty" to the fault line and sug­gest­ed the con­struc­tion should be halt­ed.

Lutch­man said a new lo­ca­tion should be sought to avert any un­to­ward in­ci­dent in fu­ture."It would be the wise de­ci­sion to put the con­struc­tion on hold and ex­am­ine all the con­sid­er­a­tions with the var­i­ous ex­per­tise avail­able be­fore a fi­nal de­ci­sion is made on it (the hos­pi­tal's lo­ca­tion)," she said.Lutch­man said con­struc­tion of any build­ing near a fault line is some­thing to be con­cerned about, but it is in­creas­ing­ly se­ri­ous when it in­volves an es­sen­tial fa­cil­i­ty such as a hos­pi­tal."It is a very se­ri­ous sit­u­a­tion. It is in the in­ter­est of any so­ci­ety that is in a zone where you have sig­nif­i­cant seis­mic ac­tiv­i­ty to put every mea­sure in place to en­sure that your hos­pi­tal is func­tion­al af­ter a ma­jor earth­quake," she said.The hos­pi­tal, which is ear­marked for con­struc­tion off the south­bound lane of the Solomon Ho­choy High­way, Cou­va, near the Preysal In­ter­change, is be­ing built through funds pro­vid­ed in a con­ces­sion­ary US$150 mil­lion loan from the Gov­ern­ment of Chi­na.

Con­struc­tion of the hos­pi­tal and burns treat­ment cen­tre be­gan in March by Shang­hai Con­struc­tion Group and is be­ing con­struct­ed un­der su­per­vi­sion of the Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion of T&T (Ude­cott) as a De­sign-Fi­nance-Con­struct mod­el. Thus far, lands have been cleared and soil test­ing is be­ing con­duct­ed on the site.Health Min­is­ter Dr Fuad Khan, speak­ing with the T&T Guardian on Wednes­day night at Rien­zi Com­plex, Cou­va, said he was made aware of the sit­u­a­tion by seis­mol­o­gists and had alert­ed the Prime Min­is­ter.Khan said he has asked for a writ­ten re­port and an of­fi­cial let­ter so he could dis­cuss the mat­ter with Hous­ing Min­is­ter Dr Roodal Mooni­lal and Per­sad-Bisses­sar."Just yes­ter­day (Tues­day) I spoke to the Prime Min­is­ter on it and she told me to see how best I can glean that in­for­ma­tion as fast as pos­si­ble," Khan said."So I am hop­ing that they will send it to me as fast as pos­si­ble. I will al­so have to send it to Dr Mooni­lal who is in charge of Ude­cott. We have to deal with that as fast as pos­si­ble."

The min­is­ter said it was a mat­ter of con­cern, but, "I have not got a let­ter in writ­ing as yet, it is just a mat­ter of ver­bal. I do not want to act on ver­bal in­for­ma­tion. I have not seen any­thing. If it is so I will have to deal with it."Mooni­lal, al­so speak­ing with the T&T Guardian in a brief in­ter­view on Wednes­day night at Rien­zi Com­plex, said: "We are in dis­cus­sions with the tech­ni­cal peo­ple at Ude­cott con­cern­ing that mat­ter and by Mon­day we should have a re­port on that mat­ter."Chair­man of the Na­tion­al Build­ing Code Com­mit­tee, Shyankaran Lal­la, penned a let­ter to Mooni­lal and Khan ad­vis­ing them of the po­ten­tial dis­as­ter if the hos­pi­tal is con­struct­ed at the present site.In his let­ter, Lal­la said: "Med­ical fa­cil­i­ties are es­sen­tial­ly re­quired, as a life­line struc­ture, not as rou­tine re­quire­ment, and must be ful­ly func­tion­al post dis­as­ter."Quakes are in­evitable, but we can take ac­tion now to lim­it the dam­age. Stronger build­ing codes and con­struc­tion stan­dards are one of the most ef­fec­tive ap­proach­es for new de­vel­op­ment."

When con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, Lal­la in­di­cat­ed that he was ad­vised of the mat­ter by mem­bers of the en­gi­neer­ing and geo­sciences com­mu­ni­ty and it was brought to the at­ten­tion of Mooni­lal, who in­di­cat­ed that he would meet and hold dis­cus­sions with stake­hold­ers.Lal­la, a res­i­dent of Cal­i­for­nia, said the peo­ple of Cen­tral wel­comed the con­struc­tion of a hos­pi­tal in their area, but asked: "Did the en­gi­neers and tech­ni­cal ad­vis­ers do a due dili­gence study in eval­u­at­ing the risk be­fore the site was rec­om­mend­ed for the con­struc­tion of new build­ings?"He said that there is a need for in­ter-agency col­lab­o­ra­tion and con­sul­ta­tion on key is­sues to avoid such er­rors, in keep­ing with reg­u­la­tions for earth­quake-re­sis­tant con­struc­tion, and "the fail­ure to do so will re­sult in the col­lapse of the build­ing dur­ing an earth­quake."He said the Gov­ern­ment should take note that earth­quakes which struck Mex­i­co City in 1985 re­sult­ed in the de­struc­tion of two of the most im­por­tant hos­pi­tals–Ju�rez Hos­pi­tal and the Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal of Mex­i­co, both of which col­lapsed in the earth­quakes' wake.

Struc­tur­al en­gi­neer Mark Fran­cois ex­pressed con­cern that a site spe­cif­ic study may not have been con­duct­ed on the pro­posed site, or the seis­mic is­sue would have been de­tect­ed ear­li­er.

"When you are build­ing a fa­cil­i­ty of that na­ture, par­tic­u­lar­ly a hos­pi­tal that needs to be ready for use in terms of an earth­quake, you need to do a site spe­cif­ic study to find out if there are any par­tic­u­lar is­sues, seis­mic or oth­er­wise, es­pe­cial­ly in a seis­mic ac­tive coun­try like T&T," he said.Fran­cois said be­fore con­trac­tors start the de­sign process they need to know that in­for­ma­tion to de­ter­mine what earth­quake forces to use in their de­sign."We had a sim­i­lar prob­lem in To­ba­go with the hos­pi­tal. It was de­signed for seis­mic zone two when it was in a high­er zone–zone three at the time," he said."I am con­cerned when in­ter­na­tion­al con­trac­tors are in­volved in the de­sign build process. There is not nec­es­sar­i­ly a com­mit­ment to do­ing what is best for us," Fran­cois added.

Seis­mic re­port

The T&T Guardian ob­tained a copy of a pre­lim­i­nary re­port from the Of­fice of Dis­as­ter Pre­pared­ness and Man­age­ment (ODPM) and the Seis­mic Re­search Cen­tre on the de­ci­sion to con­struct the hos­pi­tal in Cou­va.The re­port stat­ed: "The pro­posed site of the hos­pi­tal is lo­cat­ed with­in 10 km of the Cen­tral Range/Warm Springs (CR/WS) fault sys­tem, an ac­tive ge­o­log­ic struc­ture that pos­es very high seis­mic risk to build­ings and in­fra­struc­ture lo­cat­ed in its vicin­i­ty."Ac­cord­ing to the re­port, the CR/WS fault sys­tem is es­ti­mat­ed to be ac­com­mo­dat­ing 65 per cent of the mo­tion be­tween the Caribbean and the South Amer­i­can Plate. "Us­ing de­clas­si­fied seis­mic ex­plo­ration da­ta, So­to and Mann have mapped off­shore ex­ten­sions of the fault on ei­ther side of Trinidad and have es­ti­mat­ed that a full rup­ture will re­sult in an earth­quake of mag­ni­tude 7.5," the re­port con­tend­ed.

The re­port al­so stat­ed that the mere fact that a crit­i­cal fa­cil­i­ty could be es­tab­lished in the man­ner of the Gran Cou­va chil­dren's hos­pi­tal, "points to a crit­i­cal weak­ness in the pub­lic in­sti­tu­tions that are tasked to pro­mul­gate pub­lic safe­ty. There is no doubt that a seis­mic cri­sis looms over Trinidad and To­ba­go and it will grow in­sid­i­ous­ly if mea­sures are not put in place to ad­dress it.""The de­ci­sion to build the hos­pi­tal so near the CR/WS fault is not in keep­ing with the thrust of sus­tain­able de­vel­op­ment," the re­port con­clud­ed.The re­port's find­ings have been sup­port­ed by Lutch­man's state­ments. She ex­plained that re­searchers study­ing the Cen­tral Range Fault be­lieve that the fault line is "locked at this time."This, she said, means that the fault may be "ac­cu­mu­lat­ing strain en­er­gy and those who have been do­ing re­search in that fault sug­gest that it may have suf­fi­cient en­er­gy stored to de­liv­er an earth­quake of a mag­ni­tude of sev­en or larg­er."

How­ev­er, she has­tened to add that the fault may be al­so mov­ing smooth­ly at this time."It's one of two things. It is ei­ther it is locked and ac­cu­mu­lat­ing strain en­er­gy or it is mov­ing smooth­ly so it will not gen­er­ate big earth­quakes, but the re­searchers who are work­ing on this are lean­ing to­wards that it is locked," she said.The re­search, she said, is still on­go­ing to ac­cess what is ac­tu­al­ly hap­pen­ing with that fault line.Lutch­man said while the hos­pi­tal is an im­por­tant fa­cil­i­ty it must be con­struct­ed on a site that is more suit­able."We should be very care­ful with our con­struc­tion and in how we push for­ward our de­vel­op­ment plans. The Cou­va Chil­dren's hos­pi­tal is a sig­nif­i­cant in­vest­ment in the health­care of our coun­try and more sig­nif­i­cant­ly our next gen­er­a­tion, and there­fore we should be very care­ful in how we move foward with this project," she added.

More In­fo:The Cou­va Chil­dren's Hos­pi­tal Face­book page states that the hos­pi­tal will stand on a 60-acre site on lands from the for­mer Ca­roni (1975) Lim­it­ed. The es­ti­mat­ed cost of con­struc­tion is US$150 mil­lion (TT$975 mil­lion). The ex­pect­ed com­ple­tion date for the hos­pi­tal is March 2015.The Chil­dren's Hos­pi­tal will in­clude a mul­ti-train­ing cen­tre for med­i­cine, nurs­ing and phar­ma­col­o­gy. It will be a self-con­tained, cen­tralised med­ical fa­cil­i­ty equipped with the most mod­ern and high-end med­ical equip­ment. When com­plet­ed it will have: 230 beds, a burns care unit, a cen­tral phar­ma­cy, a chil­dren and adult ca­su­al­ty clin­ic and he­li­copter rooftop ac­cess for emer­gen­cies.