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Journalism of Courage
It was scarcely a rumble at first. Like some distant cloudburst. I thought someone was shifting furniture on the upper floor. Then when it hit, there was no time to escape. Within seconds the ceiling had tilted and taken down the front wall with it. We were staring into the street and to the school opposite. My roommate and I ran out, and saw the whole structure crumble before our eyes. It was eerily quiet; then the screams started8221;. This is how Frank Smithson, an American exchange student in China, described the catastrophic quake in Sichuan province. It took barely 30 seconds for 20,000 buildings to self-destruct and leave an estimated 50,000 dead.
Oddly, a disproportionately large number of schools collapsed as a result of faulty construction practice in the region8217;s government-funded projects. In Yinhua, a woman who lost her 13-yr old daughter complained that the school building had illegally added two more floors. 8220;When it collapsed it crumbled into fragments. That shows just how it was built8221;. Local residents call such buildings Tofu construction, as soft as soybean curd. In Dujiangyan, near the quake8217;s epicentre, a secondary school collapsed while surrounding structures suffered little damage. Among the 20,000 buildings destroyed throughout the region, 700 were schools. Petitions circulating in several Chinese towns in the province are now demanding the arrest of builders responsible for such construction.
The practice of construction bestows great profits to the builders; the practice of illegal construction, even more. The state of corruption in the industry goes unnoticed, till such a calamity as an earthquake. In the normal course of construction, for any large project 8212; say a school, housing or an office building 8212; the steady movement of thousands of kilos of steel reinforcement, bags of cement and acres of expensive granite from a building site into the contractor8217;s pocket is the natural sequence of a long building process. Builder-contractor-architect, together forms a small club of beneficiaries. False bills are raised by the contractor, sanctioned by the architect, and sent to the owner for payment. Unable to verify the vast quantities of materials required, he pays quickly, so as not to stall construction. The club prospers.
In 25 years of practice, the perils of this association are daily brought into sharp focus. For a high rise public housing project, the extra beams required for seismic support 8212; if left unbuilt 8212; could yield an additional profit of two crore on a 40-crore project. Substitution of cheaper wiring and cables 8212; though a fire hazard 8212; can add to the kitty. What8217;s more, the mere omission of fire stairs 8212; indicated on the approved plan, but left out during construction 8212; may destroy many lives, as they often have, but save a few lakhs for a Goa holiday. In matters of savings, the builder is a devoted banker, without conscience or compromise.
The northern region of India falls in Category 4 and 5 of seismic probability. The figure is an indicator of the strength of the quake anticipated, and consequently its need to be sufficiently countered by the structural strength of buildings in the region. It is a well-known fact that only 12 per cent of the approved structures conform to the seismic code, many only on paper. That doesn8217;t include the almost 60 per cent of illegal homemade constructions in towns throughout north India that are precariously balanced on three and four stories, waiting merely for a mild shake of the earth. It also doesn8217;t include thousands of others built before the seismic code came into existence. In lieu of new construction materials and practices, a serious seismic assessment of Indian buildings 8212; existing and proposed 8212; needs to be made. Rigorous strengthening of the old and a policing of the new could reduce the impact and allow people enough time to escape a high Richter quake.
The possibility of fatalities and the sheer scale of numbers, if a Sichuan type earthquake were to strike the region, are too numbing to contemplate. But if the bleak scenario has any silver lining, it is that the builder nexus may also be buried under the rubble.
The writer, a Delhi-based architect, is author of 8216;Punjabi Baroque and Other Memories of Architecture8217;
