Earthquake preparedness

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Bangladesh was rocked three times during the Eid holidays. This time many people felt it. Many panicked and were out of the building onto the streets until the tremors subsided or until they decided there would be no more quakes. There are predictions that in a major quake half the buildings in the capital would be flattened. That is the practical and unemotional side.
Imagine the destruction in terms of injuries and lives lost. Are we prepared for a catastrophe on such a massive scale?
The capital was paralysed when we had that 333 ml rain in a single night sometime ago. This would be ten times worse and a logistical nightmare for the authorities and services.
Rajuk has identified 3167 building in Dhaka city that have built floors beyond the permission granted them by the authorities. Rajuk says soon it will start demolishing those floors. That is just one precaution. It is not going to stop the earthquakes. For such eventualities you need a different kind of preparation, something more familiar to the civil defence authorities. We will need to mobilise people and resources at the shortest possible time. Then they tell us that even the hospitals are unprepared for a cataclysmic event like a massive earthquake. Do we have trained personnel by the hundreds? We will surely need them.
The three quakes were like a warning and we had better heed them.

Abdul Jalil
Babar Road
Mohammadpur,
Dhaka