The Deccan chronicle 05.12.2010
Quake could ravage buildings in KovaiCoimbatore, Dec. 4: It’s a discomfiting thought. The buildings that house the Coimbatore municipal corporation, the district collectorate and a host of other government offices may suffer massive damage if Coimbatore is hit by an earthquake of the magnitude of 6.0 on the Richter scale.
In fact the vast majority of buildings in the city could suffer similar damage as few are earthquake resistant although Coimbatore has been described as a “moderately earthquake-prone city” and categorised under Zone III, which means it can experience an earthquake of the magnitude of 6.0 on the Richter scale.
Considering that seismological analysts predict an earthquake of high magnitude can recur in a 100 years, give or take 30 years, the problem needs to be addressed with some urgency as the last major earthquake Coimbatore experienced was on February 8, 1900.
Since then there have been two other earthquakes of around 5 on the Richter scale in Idukki and Coimbatore districts on the Kerala-Tamil Nadu border in December 2000 and January 2001, respectively.
Making a case for the city to be better prepared to deal with disasters, director of the Centre for Disaster Mitigation and Management, Anna University, S. Rajarathnam, says its not too late to act.
“The corporation must ensure that new buildings that come up in the city are earthquake-resistant,” he insists.
Former IIT, Madras emeritus professor and former dean, Anna University, A.R. Shanthakumar, explains that the Bureau of Indian Standards has codes which help calculate the safe load for a building during a probable quake and how it should be structured depending on the zone and its positioning.
“Buildings built before 1992 may not have followed these codes and are most vulnerable. But these buildings can be retrofitted to make them seismic-resistant. This will cost not more than 15 per cent of the construction cost,” he says.
