The strong earthquake that shook Bangladesh on Friday morning has claimed at least five lives and left scores injured in Dhaka and several districts.
In Old Dhakaโs Kasi Tuli area on KP Ghosh Street, three pedestrians were killed instantly and ten others were injured when the railing and portions of plaster from a six-storey building collapsed onto the street below. In Palash Upazila of Narsingdi, an elderly woman died when a mud wall of her house crumbled. In Rupganj of Narayanganj, a newborn girl named Fatema was crushed to death when a wall fell on her.
Old Dhaka: https://www.facebook.com/share/r/1CkeTF3YPi
The quake, measuring 5.5 in magnitude according to the United States Geological Survey (USGS) and 5.7 according to the Bangladesh Meteorological Department (BMD), struck the country at 10:38am, with its epicentre located in Madhabdi of Narsingdi district.
More than 300 garment workers were injured in a stampede at Denimex Limited factory in Sreepur, Gazipur, as panicked workers rushed to exit the building. Several multi-storey buildings in Badda Link Road, New Market, Rampura, Uttara Sector 11, and Sutrapur developed large cracks or tilted dangerously, while bricks from an under-construction building in Khilgaon fell on a neighbouring two-storey house, injuring one person.
Seven power plants and one grid substation tripped and went offline immediately after the quake. In Ghorashal of Narsingdi, the floor of a dairy farm developed cracks, scaring the cattle, while roads in several places have been found to be broken.
Two videos have gone viral: one shows a TV anchor continuing her news presentation amid the quake, and the other features a woman on the DBC channel reciting holy verses from the Quran.
Fire Service units from Siddikbazar and Sadarghat reached the Old Dhaka incident site within minutes, and the Dhaka District Administration opened an emergency control room (contact: 01700-716678 and 02-41051065) to coordinate rescue and relief efforts.
Senior journalist Probir Kumar Sarker, who has researched earthquakes in Bangladesh for over fifteen years, described todayโs casualties as โentirely preventable tragedies caused by blatant disregard for building codes and panic among citizens due to lack of basic information about earthquake preparedness.โ
He said: โThis was not a great earthquakeโonly 5.5 to 5.7 magnitudeโyet five people are dead because railings, mud walls, and ordinary brick walls collapsed. These are classic signs of construction that never followed the Bangladesh National Building Code or the seismic zoning map. Weak materials, poor reinforcement, illegal additional floors, and zero retrofitting of old structures turned a survivable shaking into a killer.โ
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Sarker added that most of the casualties occur in the aftermath of a major earthquake due to a lack of emergency medical support and firefighters. Since Bangladesh lies in an active earthquake zone, the authorities should keep it in mind while making policies.
He added: โThe deaths in Old Dhaka, Narsingdi, and Narayanganj are a direct consequence of years of lax enforcement, corruption in building approvals, and the dangerous habit of ignoring seismic standards in a country that sits in a high-risk earthquake zone. Unless RAJUK, city corporations, and local authorities start enforcing the BNBC with zero tolerance, the next earthquakeโwhenever it comesโwill claim hundreds or thousands of lives instead of five.โ
Warnings Ignored: Earthquakes don’t kill, buildings do
In 2009, the government announced that 24,000 out of the 52,000 buildings surveyed in Sylhet town were at risk from earthquakes.
This result emerged from a survey conducted in Dhaka, Chittagong and Sylhet cities in 2008-09 under the Comprehensive Disaster Management Program (CDMP) project under the Ministry of Disaster Management and Relief.
The 2009 study found that a strong earthquake stemming from any of the three faults will cause massive destruction to buildings, bridges and supply channels of utility services in the three cities.
Chittagong is vulnerable due to Plate Boundary faults 1, 2 & 3 in the Bay, while Dhaka, with the Madhupur blind fault, is vulnerable, even in a mid-level tremor, because of its high population density and high-rise concrete structures.
According to the study, some 142,000 of 180,000 buildings in Chittagong and 78,000 out of 326,000 buildings in Dhaka are extremely vulnerable to earthquakes. Moreover, some 130,000 people could be killed right away if an earthquake of 7.5 magnitude, originating from the Madhupur blind fault, strikes the capital.
At the time, experts suggested demolition or retrofitting of risky buildings to avoid loss of lives and a massive economic loss.
They also highlighted the need for preparing maps of utility connections, training hospital staff, purchasing sophisticated equipment for the fire service, and preparing volunteers as first responders during a disaster.
Even though the Dhaka city authorities took some steps in this regard, no preparedness measures were taken by the Sylhet authorities to prevent losses. The existing vulnerable buildings were not retrofitted, while the new high-rise buildings were erected without making them earthquake-resistant.
Construction and earthquake experts say it does not cost much to make buildings that can resist strong tremors. On the other hand, retrofitting old buildings increases their life span by 100 years.
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