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| Amid major quake threat, Govt caught napping on disaster preparedness | | | Early Times Report
srinagar, May 27: As if the major earthquake, which is feared to strike the state, particularly Jammu region, causing widespread destruction, will keep the authorities apprised about its date and timing in advance that the state government has miserably failed to come out of slumber on disaster preparedness.
While over a week has passed since a US-based university cautioned of a major earthquake of magnitude 8 or greater may strike Jammu and Kashmir due to a "tectonic fault" in Reasi, which is barely 48 miles from the winter capital, the government is yet to review its preparedness to tackle any such eventuality.
On May 19, Oregon State University in the US said a major earthquake, of magnitude 8 or greater, may strike Jammu, endangering the lives of as many as a million people.
A top official dealing with the State Disaster Response Force said despite sitting on the time bomb of earthquake, the state was least prepared to tackle any eventuality adding that the SDRF was "grossly ill-equipped." "We literally have no infrastructure in place to tackle any such situation," he said.
Sources said knowing the poor disaster-preparedness on the part of the government, that Governor NN Vohra shot an SOS to Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti. Vohra's intervention has further exposed the callousness on the part of the coalition.
Sources said Vohra's letter has left a group of top most officials in police and civil administration unnerved as they are likely to be blamed for the personal failures in disaster preparedness.
Sources said the Chief Minister is all set to chair a high level meeting to decide strategy to tackle any such disaster. It was reliably learnt that the audit of present status of preparedness will only point fingers at the group of officials who avoided to act properly from time-to -time.
Officials said the State Disaster Management Authority(SDMA) has failed to take lessons from the previous disasters. Even though in 2012, the then government approved a disaster management policy, officials said its implementation was awaited.
That time, the then Chief Minister, Omar Abdullah who presided over the SDMA had approved a three-tier draft disaster management policy for the state 'which is vulnerable to natural calamities'.
But just two years later, September-2014 floods belied the government claims on preparedness when flood victims were left at the mercy of god.
Oregon State University scientists said they found that the Riasi fault has been building up pressure for some time, suggesting that when it does release or "slip," the resulting earthquake may be large - as much as magnitude 8.0 or greater.
"What we set out to learn was how much the fault has moved in the last tens of thousands of years, when it moved, and how different segments of the fault move," said Yann Gavillot, lead author on the study who did much of the work as a doctoral student at Oregon State University in the US.
Sources said, even though an alarm from US should have been enough to put government on toes, this issue was swept under the carpet till Governor intervened.
Vohra has urged Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti to take personal cognizance and issue firm directives to "each and every stakeholder" to forthwith start preparing for dealing with a deadly earthquake.
In his letter to the CM, the Governor re-iterated that J&K is predominantly located in Seismic Zone-V "and our people had, as recently as, in the 2005 earthquake, suffered considerable losses." Noting the response of the administrative system to the September 2014 floods, the Governor expressed concern that "we were totally unprepared on all fronts."
The Governor urged the "SDMA must take urgent and time bound steps for strengthening all possible structural/non-structural mitigation measures to reduce the risk vulnerability in every part of the State, particularly the two capital cities and all the other densely populated high risk urban areas." |
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