Nepal 5: Building Quality, Construction Permits and Earthquake

The strong earthquake that hit Nepal last Saturday has affected so many people. This BBC news today quotes a huge figure from  the UN.

When I was in Nepal  last January, I took some photos of Kathmandu and Pokhara from the plane.

These three shots were taken last January 12 afternoon, The plane was descending. Smog and smoke blurs the view of the mountains. There are very few buildings that are 10 storeys or higher.

Dust and smog blurs the view of the city. Some roads are unpaved and hence, dust rise when vehicles pass by. The roads between rows of houses and structures are generally narrow, they are not visible from this elevation.

The houses are generally bungalow type. I do not know how sturdy were the steel foundations that can protect the structure from strong ground movement. But very likely, their building quality is lower or weaker compared to big and tall buildings that are welded by strong steel bars, which are good protection against strong earthquakes.

 Below, some shots of a deforested hill in Pokhara, converted from forest to non-forest use, mainly for agriculture and human settlements.

Steep hill sides are stabilized by rows of terraces. Columns of trees serve perhaps as boundary markers between and among private lands and farms.

There are many houses in this hill. When there are strong earthquakes, they are prone to dangerous landslides.

Has the Nepal government, national and local, failed to enforce its building code? A bloomberg article today headlines, Nepal Building Code Author Says Disaster Was Waiting toHappen. The report noted,

In Nepal, municipalities are the responsible agencies to issue building permits, but only three out of 58 municipalities have tried to incorporate the national building code into their permit process, Naresh Giri said in a 2013 report for PreventionWeb, an information portal for the disaster reduction community. Even these attempts have been “too limited and lack the necessary verification to ensure compliance,” Giri wrote.  

Land-use plans and building code requirements aren’t applied in the countryside and they’re not enforced in slums and other informal urban settlements, said Charlotte Benson, a senior disaster risk management specialist with the Asian Development Bank in Manila.

From the WB's Doing Business annual reports, the procedures to get a construction permit in Nepal do not look too many. What pulled down  its global rank is the huge amount of fees and taxes that the Nepal government, national and local, impose on its people.

This earthquake should be a lesson for the Nepal government, to avoid high bureaucratism in giving construction permits. The people should use their money in buying more steel, more strong materials for their  houses and buildings, not in paying more fees and taxes, and possibly bribes, to government officials in  charge of granting the construction permits.

Earthquakes (EQs) are part of nature. Along with volcanic activities, they can create new islands, sink old ones, raise an  existing land or mountain, and so on. People and even geologists will never know when and where the next big EQs will happen. People can only prepare by having more sturdy houses and buildings and in the  process, minimize damages and casualties.
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See also:
Earthquake 6: One Year of Japan EQ and Tsunami, March 12, 2012
Nepal 3: Banda/Strike and Forced Closure of Shops, Schools, Transportation, February 07, 2015
Nepal 4: Earthquake and Civil Society Initiatives, April 27, 2015 
Business 360 25: Reducing Construction and Electricity Permits, April 08, 2015

Earthquake 4: EQs, Fear and Statism

This is from an American friend working and living in Tokyo, Marc A. Its funny how alarmism and statism can magnify things.
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By looking at the way TV stations and politicians are behaving, it doesn't take much of a heart to notice most of them seem to be speaking as if they almost wished things would get just a little worse... Pardon my being so straight in such a difficult time - but the way the planet tends to react (from my friends to my family to unknown people on the internet) after dark events often surprises me more then the event itself, the very emotional way we reacted after 9/11, or after H1N1 with all the vaccines and everyone exploding public budgets just to buy all the containers of sanitizer soap in sight...

Over the past few days, I've been getting calls at 2am from (otherwise happy) girls crying their heads out (from too much TV mostly) asking me if there were still people living in Tokyo or if she had been left behind all alone, many are dropping everything behind just to run to the airport to flee with legs to their ears, friends abroad are calling me as if the Earth had been flipped upside down... I remember when, 2 years ago, Ron Paul got criticized for suggesting we may want to relax a bit on the level of madness with respect to H1N1 and was booed by several especially after they had counted some 4,000 deaths attributed to the epidemic...

Anyway, TV stations have called me - and I can tell you they really don't want to hear that we're working on a solution and hopefully we'll have most fix soon, they want to know how much worse things get now and how early, how afraid I am and how quickly we can all blow up and can we take pictures of the stuff broken on your floor and of the gas-heater not working, and if I don't give them what they want, they just move the microphone off and go chat with the lady next door who's still sobbing...

the level of statism in government and the political class is directly proportional to the statism in mainstream media and the wordsmith intellectual class. Or put another way, the level of corruption in government is directly related to the corruption in mainstream media. By corruption I mean both the actual corruption in the use and abuse of public funds (notice how mainstream media select which corruption and robbery cases to expose and which ones to remain silent), and in the corruption of certain beliefs and discipline, like the corruption in climate science and their policy recommendations of more regulation, more taxation and more cronyism.

So if there is a 1 to 1 symbiotic relationship between the political class and the mainstream media, then there is a tendency to picture a bad thing as worse, or a worse situation as worst. The badder the better :-)

That could be the main reason why many people blog and express themselves as directly and as spontaneously as possible.

The problem with such corruption and opportunism by the political class and the mainstream media, is that people have the inherent drive to survive and overcome difficulties, especially for ordinary japanese citizens who have been through various challenges and humiliation -- WW2, severe earthquakes and tsunami every 2 or 3 decades.
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See also:
Earthquake 2: Japan Tsunami and Economic Preparedness
Earthquake 3: Previous Japan Earthquakes and Tsunami

Earthquake 1: EQs and Economic Freedom

Earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, and other natural geological and meteorological phenomena will be with us. They are part of nature, part of the dynamism of the planet. What we humans can do is to adapt to them as it is impossible to “conquer” them.

Worldwide, within one week alone, from January 8 to 14, 41 earthquakes that were of magnitude 5.0 or stronger occurred, http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/recenteqsww/Quakes/quakes_big.php

In the Philippines, in December 2009 alone, 9 earthquakes that were of magnitude 5.0 or stronger occurred, http://earthquake.phivolcs.dost.gov.ph/update_SOEPD/EQLatest_2009.html

And in the first two weeks of this year, 8 earthquakes with intensity 2.1 to 5.3 already occurred in the Philippines, http://earthquake.phivolcs.dost.gov.ph/update_SOEPD/EQLatest.html.

The intensity 7.0 earthquake that hit Haiti was indeed terrible. Estimates of the casualty are still wide, between 50,000 to 500,000. Even the low-end figure is still terrible.

Maybe Haitians are not so prepared with earthquakes compared to Filipinos, Indonesians, Japanese, and others living on both sides of the Pacific Ocean. In the Philippines for instance, all medium to high-rise buildings consider the occurrence of a strong earthquake to hit the country anytime.

The Earth is a dynamic planet. Below the surface (mantle, core, etc.), perhaps hundreds of earthquake belts are moving everyday. And there are volcanic formations somewhere, especially under the ocean, like the Pacific ocean. In the Philippines, we have 200+ volcanoes, about 21 are "active", meaning they've exploded over the past 600 years. Where there is an active volcano, there is an active earthquake belt below or near it.

On "Tens of thousands feared dead" in Haiti, Dr. Donald Boudreaux, Professor of Economics, George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia, made this observation: “The ultimate tragedy in Haiti isn't the earthquake; it's that country's lack of economic freedom. The earthquake simply but catastrophically revealed the inhuman consequences of this fact.

“Registering 7.0 on the Richter scale, the Haitian earthquake killed tens of thousands of people. But the quake that hit California's Bay Area in 1989 was also of magnitude 7.0. It, though, killed only 63 people.

“This difference is due chiefly to Americans' greater wealth. With one of the freest economies in the world, Americans build stronger homes and buildings, and have better health-care and better search and rescue equipment. In contrast, burdened by one of the world's least-free economies, Haitians cannot afford to build sturdy structures.”

Indeed, economic freedom is the best defense against strong earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, global cooling or warming, etc.

The strongest earthquake to hit the Philippines happened in July 1990. It was intensity 7.8, much stronger than that in Haiti. It was so strong, covered about 20,000 sq. kms., created a 125-km long rapture, and affected many cities and provinces north of Manila like Cabanatuan, Dagupan, and Baguio cities.

Despite such a strong earthquake, only 1,620 Filipinos died. Not tens of thousands as projected in Haiti.

This is not to say that the Philippines has high economic freedom compared to most countries. In the Economic Freedom of the World (EFW) 2009 report, the Philippines ranked #69 out of 141 countries surveyed, Haiti was no. 87, in between India 86th, and Turkey 88th, http://www.freetheworld.com/2009/reports/world/EFW2009_ch1.pdf.

What makes the Filipinos more adapted and more prepared to earthquakes with intensity 7.0 or stronger, is that such tremble is always in the minds of people when they construct a building or a house. We have experienced magnitude 7.8 just 20 years ago, so all building developers assume that such magnitude can occur anytime. So they are building structures that can withstand intensity 8.0 or stronger.

Politicians and governments can say, "We don't regulate earthquakes, and we help earthquake victims". Right. But if politicians and governments do not confiscate 1/4, 1/3 or 1/2 of people's monthly income in the form of mandatory and confiscatory income taxes, people would have more money to build stronger houses and stronger buildings. They can say, "Let intensity 7.0 earthquakes or stronger come in. Our building can withstand them.” The people's freedom to build stronger houses and buildings is crippled by one tax alone, income tax. And there are dozens of other taxes and fees that citizens have to contend with, depending on which country they live and work.

And it should be pointed also, that the bulk of voluntary assistance to get to earthquake victims or tsunami victims are from private individuals, private corporations and groups.

Earthquakes, both natural and political, are generally destructive. It is important that individuals should assert their economic and individual freedom against heavy politics and political intervention and taxation in their lives, so that they can adapt better to natural earthquakes.