Zero defence: Experts claim DHA housing developed on seismic fault lines

Interestingly, the area has no emergency services to cope with natural disasters.

KARACHI:

The city’s affluent seaside neighbourhood of Defence promises a dream living, but residents have experienced one of the worst nightmares the outsiders know little about.

The country’s ‘well-planned’ housing society, which accommodates the elite society of Karachi, is located on the seismic fault line. But, interestingly, it has no emergency services to cope with any natural disaster such as cyclone, earthquake or tsunami.



A particularly terrifying experience the residents share is the night of October 23, 2005, when the entire neighbourhood was hit by aftershocks of a 7.6-magnitude earthquake that jolted the country on October 8, 2005.

“Almost all of the Defence Housing Authority (DHA) area was vacated by the panic-struck residents ahead of the aftershocks that continued for days,” Samia Ali, a resident, told The Express Tribune.

“All of us spent the night of October 23 under the open sky on MA Jinnah Road,” she adds, narrating the ordeal of hundreds.

Despite development on modern lines, the area’s shortcomings on the administrative side in the form of a lack of rescue services could prove fatal for hundreds of thousands of people, say the residents.

“The DHA has a vigilance service but rescue services are non-existent,” said another resident. This raises a question mark over the planning of the management, he added.

Sensitivity of the area

Seismic experts agree with the views of the residents.

“Defence, Malir and Steel Mill areas are very close to the major fault line, where Indian tectonic plates meet Arabian tectonic plates,” says Karam Khan, a researcher at the Meteorological Office.

He said that since these localities are located close to the major seismic fault line, almost 95 per cent of the recorded earthquakes have taken place there.

Khan said that the people living in the residential area are not equipped to handle any natural disaster.

“None of the residential or commercial structures, including skyscrapers, are shockproof.”

Khan underscores, however, the need to have the emergency rescue services on stand-by.

“There is a need to chalk out a comprehensive strategy to save people. The first phase is rescue and then comes rehabilitation.”

Karachi University’s department of geology Professor Viqar Hussain said that the government functionaries and the private bodies are not willing to make any contingency plans for rescue services.

“Although the DHA conducts geological survey before the construction of any buildings, its residential houses are most vulnerable if any disaster strikes,” he said, adding that disaster risk reduction courses should be included in the curriculum of schools to train the children.

Indian and Arabian tectonic plates are just 180 kilometres away from the costal lines of Karachi. “We are living atop a bundle of dynamites.”

“No building codes have been applied to any structures in Karachi, including the ones in the DHA,” he added.

He recalled that after the 2001 earthquake, National Aeronautics and Space Administration had arranged a meeting of prominent geologists from Pakistan.

“In the seminar, the participants wondered how Karachi escaped mass destruction in the earthquake.”

He said there was a need to apply building codes, adding that in Defence, water seeped into the foundations of the walls of houses, indicating that thousands of tremors have occurred around the coastal belt of Karachi.

The city government also lacks rescue service facility.

A DHA official informed, “We have a rescue service for the employees but not for the residents,” he said.

“The residents of Defence use their vehicles during medical emergencies, so there is no urgent need for a rescue service,” the official added.

He said that the DHA had a central control room through which the Military Estate Office, DHA and Clifton Cantonment Board jointly approve building maps.

He said it was the responsibility of the person who was getting his house built to follow the building code of any residential house, however, the authority strictly checked the enforcement of by-laws when high-rise buildings were being built in the DHA.

“We focus especially on the high-rise buildings and conduct geological surveys from time to time.”

Published in The Express Tribune, January 2^nd, 2014.