Pakistan Rocked

Ijaz,

Excellent article. May god give the victims the succor and strength to overcome this calamity.

Ejaz

Thanks for an informative article.

Even Sargodha has a fault line - that was news to me.

nhk

instead of blaming the central government, pakistanis need to do a bit more introspection if they want to be better positioned to deal with the impact of natural disasters. voters in nwfp voted mma to power. and now, while thousands of quake survivors in the province are fighting for their lives. mma government is busy passing the sickening and the divisive hasba bill. mma supporters might counter that hasba bill will prevent god from causing further earthquakes, my question to them would be what is so un-islamic about iran that caused god to send an earthquake there which took the lives of 18,000 people about two years back? i mean would`nt less people die if the government took steps to design better building codes, more effective regulatory agencies and a viable disaster recovery plan?

i think next time the pathans vote mma to power, they wont have anyone else to blame but themselves for the consequences. people really do get the government they deserve.

Ijaz saheb,

Alslaamo-Alaikum.

I came back from a trip to the USA and decided to read your article and respond to some messages.

Being a civil engineer to start with who had considerable interest in Geology (although I have practiced neither of them after post-graduation), I can relate to the technical aspects of the article. I know that the Government is going to introduce building code required for earthquake resistant structures. However, similar code was introduced in Turkey, yet the designers corrupt their war around it.

Thanks for putting the credit where the credit is due. I believe that Military`s performance post earthquake has been magnificient.

urstruly:

I agree that there is no civil defense structure in the country. But do remember that this earthquake was of such a huge magnitude, that even if there were a civil defense organization in Kohistan and Kashmir, it would have been paralyzed too.

Ijaz,
Great article, many many thanks for this detailed description. I must say, we rarely find such academic presentations in Pakistan and that too so soon after a debacle. Hats off dude, keep it up.

Thank you Ijaz gul for the information,..I also found that the catalogue of Indian earth quakes , was compiled by Oldham T,....in 1893 ,.and it was published by geological Survey of India,....and it contained useful history of Indian earth quakes...

Unfortunately in The corrupt setup of Pakistan,...these libraries,..reference materials have deliberately been destroyed by the mafia, ....

District council and municipal committee Abbottabad inherited a wonderful library from Britishers,..which contained all kind of gazetteers, hand books,..building codes and conservation manuals,...

Before partition,..When population of Abbottabad was 18,000....then muncipal committee had a wonderful library,..and it mantained central fire hydrant system and central drainage system ,..but now when we have population of 0.9 million people,and income of Rs 50 million a year..there is no library,...no battery in the fire truck,...and drainage system is half clogged with the gravel, which came from the cement less government constructions.....

The only library, which we have in Abbottabad Cantonment is intentionally filled with books from Naseem Hijazi,Talwar toot gahi....jasoosi digests,....``Ishqia Ashhaar``... ghamgeen novels ,..oor mein ney dhaka dhobtay dhekha,....shahab nama,....

How can a nation learn about emergency preparedness and real life issues with such books,...and those manuals,...and cataloques and building codes,..they are gone with the ``kuffars``....

Government buildings, of Rs 16 billion worth , got destroyed in this earth quake,which killed thousands of innocent children...and government engineers take 40 percent commission (bribe) from the contractors,

Rs 10 billion a year are given for new constructions and development to these ``Engineers``of NWFP,..another Rs 10 billion are given for normal maintenance, salaries, rest houses, jeeps and perks,... ........so rules,...manuals ,..building codes needed to be removed from our society,....

Libraries disappeared ,.....and ``marnay kay bad kiya ho gha``....oor ``qabar ka Azaab``....appeared every where,......We are trapped,....

Mr ijaz Gul

Thanks for the wealth of information you have shared here...

some of it is pretty disturbing.... and I have a nagging feeling that within the next
2-8 years we might witness ,another catastropic event, maybe in the vincity of either
Karachi or somewhere along the Maybe Pothwar AREA....

Can`t pinpoint why am I getting this feeling... But ........

Lets hope for the best.... and I think its time Government wakes up... and start doing something concrete on WAR footing... and lets not waste our stirred up energies....
Yes these are signs from God or Allah or whatever.... But are of a different Nature...
they might be telling us , about more of such catastropies to come...

Jay,
]welcome back after along absence.

Real Rocking,

What happened in POK is nothing compared to what is in store. The fact that laskers and other jihadis have declared a stop to terrorism is the final confirmation of the ISI-jihadi nexus ruling pakistan.
The US trops will not be leaving in a hurry, till the jihjadis are rooted out, and the pak antogonism towards them will increse. In a matter of months there will be attacks against the US troops in pakistn and that is when the real rocking of pakistan will start.

The earth quake has given an excuse for the US to more actively run pakastsan and at last correct the error of judgement of Colin Powells. That stupid man did not include pakitan in its attack on alquida, and now in the pak afghan border US troops are being killed and there is a poerenial threat to peace in Afghanisatn. The source of evil is intact, how long the world has to pay for it.

It will be a slow decimation of teh jihadis, the lack of support from the world powers for eath quake releief is the poof.

India gives 25 milliom, Chna give 0.5 million, US gives 50 million and a whole lot troops.

Wake up YLH and ferozks of pakistan, dogs are p...issing on the swag

Ijaz,

What is important at this stage is not the details of the earth quake, but response to it. Countries have prpmosed money, but no one is giving hard cash, they insist on supplying goods. There is no money for the releif agencies to hire local trucks, to pay for the pocals to support the releif work. Wonder what is the reson...

Well, it is very simple, the donors know that the money will be siphoned off into other budgetary expenses and teh surplus will be diverted to military, and the jihadis. It is time that pakistansi realise that the only country interested in pakistan is india, it does not want it to become a more failed state.

The pak president used the word ``sensitivities` in accepting indian aid. The truth is that it is the most blatant insensitivity shown to the victims in not accepting the indian aid. The poor are suffering, and pakistan si playing politics.

The notion of pak pilots flying indian helicopters shows the total incompetance of the pak military, they have no clue that even when helicopters are of teh same make, they are fitted with wide array of equipments of which the pak pilots will have no clue.

It os true for even cilvil aeroplanes, for example A320 it could come with CFM or V2500 engine, Honeywell or Sundstrand APus, and a whole different range of communication and operational equipments.

There is a high level of ignorence in all walks of life in pakistan, and the earth quake has shown it all.

It is pathetic that the YLH and romairs of pakistn do not recognise the pathetic state of their country in all wlaks of life.

alert,
plz read this and along the way you will find many references.

http://www.davidaspencer.com/1811publicationsscipapersa.html

This is by Pakistan`s only seismologist, Monolisa Khan

http://www.hdip.com.pk/MonaLisa-PJHR.htm

Re: # 32

Mr Ijaz Gul you wrote in your article:

``In 1554 another powerful earthquake had hit. Based on this data, seismologists had predicted an overdue earthquake on the Hazara Fault with an intensity of 8, in an area covering Kaghan to Srinagar.``

Mr Gul,.. could you please tell us more about these predictions by seismologists,...I am presently in Canada,..so I don,t have access to local libraries and local experts,.....how many times such reports were submitted to the government of NWFP ...???corrupt government officials ignored all kind of news papers reports,..building codes,..municipal and cantonment bye-laws.... ???situation is completely dangerous....thanks

Re: # 30

Thank you Ijaz gul for an informative article, will you be kind enough to tell us a bit more about Hazara fault, ...did Britishers know about it before 1947...??,...please tell us more about it....I noticed one time, in Abbottabad,.. when PWD people were demolishing a Britishers built single storey government building ,.that it had very broad and deep foundations,..and the upper portion was light weight and flexible..... may be they knew about the quake risks in the area ...please guide us, where can we find more about it ....thank you

I myself was in Muzaffarabad on 11th Oct. I actually planned to see a friend who lived only 7-8 km away from the main city on the raod leading to Neelum Valley. We could go only less than 1 km in our vehicle as there was no road to be seen anywhere. All we could see was the newly shaped terrain, with coninuous landslides. Those who were willing to continue on feet had to return because of the eminent threat of slides. When the aftershocks would subside, the rain would play its role in making things more miserable.

The next whole week I witnessed no different scenes in NWFP. In Batgram my own family had to spend nights under open skies. Some of them are still in great wide open, exposed to the elements and constant fear of further damage. Least visibel are the psychological scars but u sense them only when you engage them in a connecting conversation. I very rarely find the courage to do it. Now I have returned to Islamabad, bringing few of my klan members to the relative safety. But how safe we really are? or thousands others who have actually become the main characters of this tragic drama, unlike me who just witnessed it from the sideline.
The scale of the devastation makes you dumbfounded.

I`ve seen some satellite imagery on few interacts. Here is another link where you can see Muzaffarabad beofore and after the disaster.

http://www.spaceimaging.com/gallery/AsiaEQViewer.htm

avaishka,
No these are eight hypotheses and the first one on the extreme left is right on target. In terms of probability, it could be calculated at a low rating, but that is how accurate seismologists can get in this discipline. The poineering work on this is attributable to some excellent Indian scientist. However, they were more biased towards Kangra.

As for further North West, I did discuss with my friend Sher Bahadur, who is a geologist. He maintains that it could. My own uneducated view is that the Kohistan Massif has also been shaken and the Nanga Parbat Massif is also moving. So What? I cannot comment.
Cheerios

Ijaz,
Can you throw more light on the first picture? Does it mean that the next earthe quake would happen further North west of the latest one (somewhere in the border of Pakistan/Afghanistan)?

Thanks,
Avkrishna