Dhaka city on the time-bomb!
Image: Kazi Tahsin Agaz Apurbo
Unlike a storm, a flood or a famine, an earthquake never signals or even hints at its arrival. It can happen at any time with an estimated 500,000 earthquakes shaking the Earth to its very foundations each year. Unfortunately for us, Dhaka happens to be one of the most risky zones of Bangladesh when it comes to this calamity. Beneath the hustle and bustle of our very own mega-polis, the plates have begun to shift, building up decades of tension, awaiting release. The impact of the foretold Earthquake is predicted to be worse than the bombing of Hiroshima. It is estimated that a 7.5 magnitude earthquake would kill about 130,000 people and level 72,000 buildings, according to a Bangladesh's government report.
Given that Dhaka is a little far, nearly 5 to 500 km, from the Myanmar micro-plate, even if a 7 magnitude earthquake hits Assam, India , then Dhaka will teeter on the possibility of being ruined, according to a seismologist. Approximately 20 tremors happened last year and among them 18 hit magnitudes of over four. Experts fear they may just have been warnings for Dhaka.
The most destructive quake in recorded history was the 1556 Shaanxi earthquake in China where more than 830,000 people died. Moreover, the 7.5 earthquake near Beijing in 1976 killed 240,000 but the magnitude of 7.0 in Haiti in 2010 led to the loss of lives of 316,000. Then there was the strong earthquake of 8.6 magnitudes which occurred in Assam on August 15 in 1950, killing 1,526 people preceded by another 8.1 magnitude quake which hit Assam on June 12 in 1897 killing 1,500 people. The comparatively lower level of casualties was because of the low density of the population and the few concrete structures present at the time. Given this context, we can observe from the estimate above, that Bangladesh is in grave danger.
Dhaka is a megacity boasting one of the highest population densities in the world. This city lies in the moderate risk zone due to some other factors such as the high population density, unplanned urbanisation, and lack of open spaces making the capital all the more vulnerable. Because of this, most of the people in this city perceive that Dhaka is sitting on a rapidly ticking time-bomb.
To put things further into context, an understanding of the strength of the possible earthquake needs to be developed. In August of 1945, The United States of America cast down a ruinous atomic bomb on Nagasaki in Japan. The result was a loss of 40,000 lives. The power of 'Fatman', as the bomb was known, was 20,000 TNT (Tri Nitro Toluene). If 5 thousand such bombs were to blow up together, it will be equivalent of ten core ton TNT. It now seems that thousands of atomic bombs lie beneath this city. It has now become a natural curse for us. We are largely afraid that, if more powerful tremors begin to hit our city, then it must lose its habitability overtime. We have a brutal history of collapsing buildings owing to lax building codes. This does not bode well for us. Our response teams are also ill-equipped, as demonstrated by the fall of Rana Plaza and the 21 day rescue effort it took.
Now we are worried that if Dhaka is flattened by a terrible quake then how much time will be taken to defend or even conduct the rescue operations. This is the time for us to make important decisions and formulate policies keeping such disasters in mind. There are thousands of powerful ticking time bombs underneath our beautiful city. We can no longer close our eyes and ears and continue to ignore this matter.
The writer is a student of University of Dhaka, and a policy maker at Social awareness forum of Bangladesh (SAF).
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