According to a study of the National Centre for Seismology (NCS) Srinagar is one of the Twenty-nine Indian cities and towns, including Delhi and capitals of nine States, that fall under “severe” to “very severe” seismic zones or zone V in technical language. Actually the entire Himalayan range from Assam to J&K and including Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh and Jammu and Kashmir is seismologically vulnerable. Past history of J&K tells us that it has been a victim of earthquakes at a number of times. Only some years back there was a horrible earthquake in PoK region which destroyed so many lives and structures and sill rehabilitation work by Pakistani and foreign agencies is going on in that area.
Srinagar is a very congested city and houses are crowded and built in haphazard manner owing to lack of planning. In such crowded cities God forbid an earthquake could be disastrous. Additionally, the people in Kashmir are fond of building three and four storey houses, without maintaining a gap. Mostly these houses are made of bricks and wood which is vulnerable to earthquake. In Japan, they make very tiny houses which would not do much damage to human lives in case of collapsing of the houses. Maybe the government might advise the people to build only two storey houses at the most and also use light material for construction. This warning also calls for the readiness of disaster management system in the state. State Housing Department should make it a point that any new colony or habitation is raised according to well laid out plan which must also take care of any unforeseen happening.
There is also need of diversification of building material in Kashmir in particular in view of the cold climate of the region. Our town planners should study the modern building techniques in European countries which are cold like Kashmir and learn some useful lessons from their construction system.
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