Building shock proof infrastructure

Turkey and Syria on Monday woke up to the large scale of deaths and destruction. The catastrophe was caused by a massive earthquake collapsing skyscrapers and killing hundreds of people. The experts said that the intensity of the earthquake was 7.8 on richter scale and its aftershocks were equally powerful to destroy whatever was left by the main shock.
The actual details and losses in this natural calamity can only be assessed once the rescue operation is over which may take many weeks. Turkey is a developed European country which has strong economic indicators. It may in coming times overcome the infrastructural losses, though human loses anywhere are most unfortunate.
But let’s talk about Kashmir which is equally in a most vulnerable seismic zones of the world. Experts have warned of such shocks in Kashmir and have long back insisted to focus on shock proof infrastructure build up.
In 2004, Kashmir had a same calamity with an earthquake 7.6 magnitude shaking it from the core. Hundreds died and the infrastructure was totally collapsed. Its epicenter was in Pakistan Occupied Jammu Kashmir.
The city of Muzaffarabad and its adjoining areas were totally collapsed and Turkey was a main allay of Pakistan which helped it to rebuild. Post 2004, earthquake Kashmir seems to have forget that nightmare and continued to build public infrastructure and homes ignoring highest level of safety standards.
Majority of our homes have less or no capacity to absorb such shocks. We have not learnt the lessons from past and the situation of Turkey which has world-class infrastructure is reduced to rubble. Where do we stand in case of such eventuality.
It is mainly the responsibility of our government to set up safety standards with expert suggestions necessarily for building homes and other public infrastructure. Such incidents can’t be overlooked that may pose grave risk to our life and property in such situations.