School building tilts, cracks emerge after mild tremor in Sylhet

After a mild tremor of magnitude 3.8 that jolted Sylhet city on Monday evening, cracks developed cracked on a two-storey academic building of the century-old Raja Girish Chandra (GC) High School.

The building tilted and developed cracks in several walls and a few columns, confirmed Md Abdul Mumin, head teacher of the school, adding that the school's century-old buildings are intact.

The ground floor of the academic building, named after late Sylhet city mayor Badar Uddin Ahmed Kamran, was constructed in the early 90s and was vertically extended in 2017 by the Education Engineering Department in Sylhet.

After inspecting the building yesterday, Md Nazrul Hakim, executive engineer of Education Engineering Department in Sylhet declared the building abandoned.

He said, "In the 90s, it was common to construct academic buildings not taller than two-storeys, and they would not consider the threat posed by earthquakes. Construction these days has developed, and we follow building code accordingly now."

He also said the department will now prepare a plan for an alternative academic building on the premises by demolishing the current one.

After the building developed cracks, a team of Sylhet City Corporation, led by Mayor Ariful Haque Chowdhury, visited the institute on Monday.

During the visit, the mayor said, "There was a large pond behind the building, which might have made the building risk-prone. Now, the cracks made the building very unstable, and I see no way but to demolish it for further betterment."

"We've arranged a meeting with experts of Shahjalal University of Science and Technology on Wednesday [today], where we'll decide on examining all buildings of the city to assess risk," he said.

On May 29, four mild tremors jolted Sylhet city within three hours, starting in the morning at 10:36am, and later, another light tremor was felt the next morning at 4:30am.

Experts showed serious concern over the possibility of a massive earthquake of magnitude more than 7.5, likely to be triggered at the Dauki Fault Line, only 55 kilometres north of Sylhet city.