What are the chances of earthquake in South India?

Nepal experienced the most heart rending earthquake and the most devastating calamity of the recent times with a total loss of over 5, 000 lives. Has it ever occurred to you how safe you are? God forbid that you don’t have to go through such tumultuous times but how safe is your zone from earthquakes.

The seismic map of India states that most of the south Indian cities are rated as moderate to less active for the occurrence of earthquakes. Even then unsafe building structures can lead to the risk of ushering in the unfortunate, opines the civil and the structural engineers.

The seismologists opine that Kashmir, Nepal and the areas that are near the foot hills of the Himalayan range are at high risk of earthquake. Even the North Eastern part of India and Burma are highly earthquake prone areas. The seismological studies state that there are chances of earthquakes to the magnitude of 7 or above in the Richter scale in these areas. But they do not certainly mean that Southern part of India is totally safe from earthquakes.

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The subject matter experts say that there are many seismic activities in these regions too to trigger an earthquake in the range of 6 or even 6.4 on the Richter scale. The designs of buildings which are earthquake resistant are not at all new in the subject of structural design and civil engineering but people’s awareness in this subject is not so much there. The town planners and other experts say that few buildings of social infrastructure like schools, colleges, hospitals, telephone exchanges and telecommunication hubs has to be retrofitted in to earthquake resistant structures. The newer buildings have to be certified from the stand point of structural safety and the old ones should be rehabilitated.

The structural code 1893 part I specify the design norms which have to be followed and it states: The building to be earthquake resistant should have four characteristics namely simplicity and regularity in configuration, enough lateral strength, ductility and stiffness. Buildings with irregular configuration, non-un inform mass distribution and not so stiff in plan suffer more damages in case of an earthquake.

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Special attention should be given and effective structural design should be adopted for special structures such as schools, colleges, hospitals, emergency buildings like fire and radio stations and media and television broadcast stations, assembly halls, cinemas and theater halls, power generating stations and substations and subway stations, etc.