‘Why do we, the super-educated people, ignore basic principles?’

Why was the Gujarat quake so devastating, especially in the case of buildings?
I am not a seismologist. The only comment I wish to make is that most of us know that under the earth’s surface, there are these great plates which normally lie flat – sometime precariously overlapping each other – but below these plates are various forces which occasionally lift or move the plates and the earth’s surface above it to curve in the form of an earthquake.

Unfortunately, we tend to make our judgments from what we are shown of the devastation in big or well known cities. We do not realise that in fact, the impact and damage may be far greater. To poor people living in scattered, large and small villages where timely help is often not available.

Not only high-rise modern buildings but also the old ones constructed in local styles collapsed in Gujarat.
I know that I often compare old traditional architectural styles with modern ones. I have continuously been aware of these different styles as my works in India has taken me from north to south and from east to west. Local styles have evolved by using local, on the spot materials and these have been used to cope with the topography, the climate, the local industry and the cultural and religions patterns of living of local people.

Even our ancestors knew that some regions seemed to be ‘‘attacked’’ by earthquakes while others were completely free from them. This is also evident in architectural styles. I have lived in areas subjected to earth tremors for example I lived for years in the Himalayan range, where all buildings were of traditional thick stone bound together, like two hands with inter-twined fingers that can’t easily be pulled apart.

But alas, builders over the last few decades preferred to put nice, big well shaped stones on the outside and inside of the walls and fill in the centre with broken stones. All our recent big earthquakes show how the outside of a stone wall fell outward and the inside fell inward and the central ‘rubbish’ merely fell down in a heap.

I have know Ahmedabad and other parts of Gujarat but do not know Bhuj. So I cannot offer explanations or give examples for the many devastated villages and other collapsed houses.

In Uttarkashi, Chamoli and Latur, this was clearly seen. A study also revealed that the current ‘‘local style’’ were adopted by masons who had come up from the plains and were not acquainted with local methods.

Could the Gujarat disaster could have been averted?
One answer to that is, of course, no. Man has no control over what goes in in the bowls of mother earth. We do not know about ‘plates’ and ‘faults’ and ‘seismic zones’, but we have no control over when, where and how the faults will be felt and seen on the earth surface.

But the other answer is ‘yes’. We could have made better use of our knowledge of buildings in known seismic areas. There has been an apparent lack of common sense in our choice of design of modern high-rise buildings.

How could modern buildings be made quake-resistant?
There are two or three well known basic principles of mathematics, geometry, structural design and zone, which are not just obviously and demonstrably visible, but absolutely basic. They can be seen by five-year-old children in their first year at school but are not seen or understood or applied by highly qualified scientists, engineers and architects. A triangle once drawn or made cannot be altered in its shape. Whereas, a square or rectangle can.

Our traditional Kerala wooden houses clearly demonstrate this principle or fact. But almost all our modern and global structures completely ignore these principles.

To me, the biggest question is, why do we super-educated people totally ignore this principle in our buildings? Obviously, the collapse of a ten-storeyed block of offices and apartments is more dramatic than the collapse of a small single or double storeyed house.

Occasionally, the world over, people have wanted to ‘‘build high’’ normally for religious or national symbolism. But they all had the common sense to use the triangle or pyramid styles even though they had no degree after their names and that they were living a 100 or 1,000 or 2,000 years ago.

I am convinced that we now have enough knowledge to avoid a a great deal of the damage caused by the earthquake. I read in a newspaper that a famous expert pointed out that there is a possibility of an even greater quake stretching from Kathmandu in Nepal to Dehradun. But we first have to cope with the results of the Gujarat disaster.