he next Haiti?

By Ardeshir Cowasjee
Sunday, 21 Feb, 2010

Scavengers look for goods at a collapsed building in Port-au-Prince. AP

GOOD news the first duty of a government is to maintain law and order.
(Mohammad Ali Jinnah, Aug 11, 1947). We are getting nearer, thanks to Chief
Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry.

Bad news on Feb 14 the BBC posed the question: the devastating earthquakes that hit
China on May 12, 2008, Italy on April 6, 2009 and Haiti last month all measured above 6.0
on the Richter Scale and took many lives. But why was the human cost so much greater for
Haiti?

Haitis figures (230,000 estimated dead, 300,000 injured) compared unfavourably with
China (87,476 dead, 360,000 injured) and Italy (295 dead, 2,000 injured). The head of the
Red Cross disaster relief team had this to say about Haiti: These countries have less money
to put into buildings and there is less governance ensuring building codes are followed.
Corruption can also be an issue and so, even when there are government structures to
ensure building codes are followed, there are bribes that enable people to take short cuts.
Put simply there are the technical elements of the earthquake and then the social
elements on top of that.
Therefore, the fact that the Haiti quake hit close to a poorly constructed, large urban area
was crucial in reducing peoples chances of survival. One in 15 affected by this metropolitan
earthquake died thus illustrating that earthquakes do not kill, but falling buildings do.

Karachi fits the Haiti bill. Our developers put minimum money into buildings. There is no
governance to ensure that building codes are implemented. Corruption in the Karachi
Building Control Authority (KBCA) and the cantonment boards is rampant. Short cuts are
the order of the day. A recipe for disaster.

Karachi, with its dense population of over 18 million, lies in the upper moderate seismic
zone 2B, close to the confluence of three major tectonic plates: the Indian Plate, the
Arabian Plate, and the Eurasian Plate. According to geologists, four active fault lines are
identified in the immediate vicinity Karachi-Jati, Allah Bund-Rann of Kutch, Surjan-
Jhimpir and Pab. On two occasions in the past 65 years, in 1945 and 1985, earthquakes of
lesser intensity have struck. So far, we have been lucky.

After the 1999 Turkish earthquake, numerous court stay orders collusively obtained by the
builders-KBCA/Cantonment Board nexus were vacated, and illegal structures were ordered
to be demolished. After delaying statutory action, the powerful developers mafia persuaded
their political patrons to promulgate the Regularisation Ordinance of 2002, effectively
eliminating whatever will there was to dismantle dangerous structures. If there is a big one
in Karachi, we may see devastation rivalling Port-au-Prince.

The relatively clean interim government of 1997 established, under Section 4-B of the Sindh
Building Control Ordinance 1979, an oversee committee for the KBCA comprising 20
members 10 from the government and 10 representing professional architect/engineer
bodies, builders, educational institutions, environmental groups, lawyers and concerned
citizens. It met every month, holding 66 meetings over five years, and established a
modicum of transparency in the workings of the nest of corruption (as then Governor
Kamal Azfar dubbed the KBCA in his 1997 PPP government dissolution order).

The committee also set up a public information counter where copies of building plans and
approval documents were available to citizens at a nominal cost, a service that enabled
many to avoid being defrauded by the KBCA builders nexus. Over 10 officials were
rusticated for corruption, but in 2003 were reinstated when the new local government
system took over. They are presently conducting business as usual in the KBCA.
Transparency reduces corruption. However, despite high court directives in CP1599/09 and
CP1221/04, and the Sindh Freedom of Information Bill 2006, all of which direct KBCA to
make building plans, documents, progress reports and details of public sale projects
immediately available to the general public (even up to posting particulars on its website), it
chooses to work in the shadows.

Hundreds of flats and shops are being sold all over the city (Garden East/West, Gulshan-i-
Iqbal, Gulistan-i-Jauhar, Korangi, etc), in collusion with KBCA officials, without the
mandatory NOC for sale meant to protect innocent buyers. Hundreds of houses are being
constructed without approved plans by politically patronised encroachers on amenity/park
spaces in North Nazimabad, Gutter Baghicha, Mahmoodabad Sewage Treatment Plant, etc,
while KBCA silently watches.

Indulging in hypocritical hanky panky, KBCA filed CP 1932/08 in the Sindh High Court
against the police, KESC, SSGCL, provincial government and registrar of properties
complaining that the 250-officer-manned KBCA (total strength over 1,000) was unable to
stop illegal construction because these agencies were not cooperating.

Allegedly, these bodies were not providing law and order cover for demolitions/evictions,
were supplying utilities and sub-leases to illegal occupants, and were not finalising criminal
prosecution cases. The KBCA submitted an initial list of 110 unauthorised buildings in Lyari,
Gulshan-i-Iqbal, Nazimabad, Gulberg, Saddar and Liaquatabad that it asked the court and
the respondents to tackle.

Having filed its petition, the KBCA carried on with its normal work taking bribes for
approving plans (with violations), looking the other way while illegal construction/sales
accelerated, condoning irregularities and issuing regularisation documents. When tackled
for negligence of duty or corruption, the KBCA was able to cite the pending petition as
evidence of its sincerity and helplessness.

Complaints have recently been submitted by Shehri to the Sindh Environmental Protection
Authority, KBCA and MPGO (Master Plan Group of Offices) about two gigantic under-
construction commercial projects, a 57-storey BT Tower on Sharah-i-Firdous near Abdullah
Ghazi Mazar, and the 60-storey Karachi Financial Towers in Chundrigar Roads Railway
Yard. No EIAs (Environmental Assessment Impact) have been filed, the plots have not been
commercialised, and the KBCA approval documents are not available.

Once again, the citizens of Karachi are warned about the technical elements and the social
elements of earthquakes in the city.

arfc@cyber.net.pk

The next Haiti? II

By Ardeshir Cowasjee
Sunday, 07 Mar, 2010

The government must warn the occupants of regularised (and other poor) structures of the life
hazards faced. AFP/File Photo
IN response to my first column under this title came a message from a reader at
the UN in New York.

The message said: I think a lot of our colleagues in Haiti may have been saved if they had
had an earthquake awareness workshop in which they could have been advised of what an
earthquake sounds like before the shaking and tremors start some of the staff who
recognised what the roar was, ran outdoors and were saved. Earthquake safety
information must be disseminated to the public at large, so Pakistanis are better prepared.
Preparedness is the key to survival.
The 8.8 Richter Scale earthquake in Chile which followed shortly thereafter resulted in less
than 1,000 deaths, compared to over 250,000 in the lower-intensity Haiti catastrophe.
Experts attribute this to better compliance with seismic construction codes and greater
distance of population concentrations from the epicentre.

Information on what one must do before, during and after an earthquake is available on
numerous websites the Red Cross, FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Authority)
and international groups handling emergencies and disaster-preparedness.
Recommendations differ, depending on the quality and type of construction. In the US, the
drop, cover, and hold on approach is generally advocated, while in countries with poor
construction where buildings collapse and pancake during even moderate earthquakes the
void identification method or the Triangle of Life may be the best thing.

An article in the New York Times of Feb 25 entitled Disaster awaits cities in earthquake
zones, focused on Istanbul as one of a host of quake-threatened cities in the developing
world where populations have swelled far faster than the capacity to house them safely,
setting them up for disaster of a scope that could, in some cases, surpass the devastation in
Haiti from last months earthquake.

The next quake could kill 30,000 to 40,000 people and injure over 120,000 because the
city is rife with buildings with glaring flaws, like ground floors with walls or columns
removed to make way for store displays, or a succession of illegal new floors added in each
election period on the presumption that local officials will look the other way. On many
blocks, upper floors jut precariously over the sidewalk, taking advantage of an old
permitting process that governed only a buildings footprint. This sounds eerily like Karachi
with its exploding construction.

Calling houses and buildings an unrecognised weapon of mass destruction, the article
includes Karachi, Dhaka, Cairo, Bangkok, Tehran, Jakarta, Lima and Kathmandu on a long
list of big poor cities facing inevitable major earthquakes. But, unlike Karachi, whose
population has exploded from 0.4 million in 1947 to 18 million today, Istanbul is trying to do
something about its rubble in waiting.

An earthquake master plan (available on the Internet) has been created for the city by four
Turkish universities. It promotes a social contract between the central government, local
government, district municipalities, NGOs, business enterprises, and institutions to work
together to prepare for, encounter, and emerge from the next big one.
The government is involved from the highest level with tighter building codes, mandatory
earthquake insurance and loans from international development banks for buttressing or
replacing vulnerable schools and other public buildings.

The citizens are also involved so that non-profit groups, recognising the limits of
centralised planning, train dozens of teams of volunteers in poor districts and outfit them
with radios, crowbars and first-aid kits so they can dig into the wreckage when their
neighbourhoods are shaken.

It is being ensured that fire-stations, hospitals and schools (as public shelters) continue to
stand, by rehabilitating dangerous construction (adding reinforced walls, jackets of new
concrete and steel reinforcement around old columns). The threat of thousands of fires from
rupturing natural-gas lines, roads blocked by falling structures and billboards, and other like
horrors are anticipated and planned for.

Children in school are taught what to do if the ground moves. Civil engineers are educated
in the intricacies of seismic design/reinforcement. Public awareness is being heightened. The
objective is to shift existing faith-oriented [Allah ki marzi], reactive and recovery-based
policies into proactive, mitigative and preventive approaches.

What is Karachi doing? The federal, provincial and city governments are completely
oblivious to any earthquake threat to the city; ours is the faith-oriented view. The KBCA
(Karachi Building Control Authority) officials, low on capability, high on corruptibility, would
not recognise a dangerous building if it fell on them.

Over the past decade, poorly constructed multi-storeys, erected in brazen violation of so-
called KBCA-approved plans, utilising shoddy materials and workmanship, have been
collusively regularised by the KBCA, to protect the life-savings of widows and orphans
(the words of former governor Mohammadmian Soomro). Some 6,300 buildings have been
regularised, and 6,600-plus are in the pipeline.

These do not include the 26 high-rises of the Association of Builders & Developers on
Sharea Faisal that the KBCA in a 1998 warning-notice declared to be potentially dangerous
constructed in violation of earthquake-resistant design. Hundreds of other projects
ordered by the Sindh High Court to be demolished still stand.
KBCA takes no responsibility for the seismic stability of buildings regularised by them.
Briefcase architects/engineers have certified illegal structures to be safe, and the KBCA has
condoned the offences. Should one structure collapse in an earthquake the
architect/engineer will be untraceable; if many fall the KBCA officials will also disappear. The
government must warn the occupants of regularised (and other poor) structures of the life
hazards faced. The officials (KBCA, cantonment boards) who continue to condone dangerous
constructions and the builders who violate the codes must be prosecuted. The politicians
who sponsor and promote illegal buildings and regularisation ordinances must be brought
to book.

Can this be done? Or do we have no alternative but to stay with our faith-oriented
approach.

arfc@cyber.net.pk