On Saturday morning, 8 October, there was a massive earthquake which struck Pakistan-administered Kashmir. It happens near the city of Muzaffarabad. This earthquake had also caused widespread of destructions to the Pakistan, India and Afghanistan.
As the Indian Tectonic plate is moving in northward direction, (at a speed of aout 40mm/year), this caused major fault systems in Northern India, Pakistan and Kashmir.
The magnitude of this earthquake is 7.6. This earthquake killed more than 80 000 people, 65 000 injured and an estimated of 4million people were homeless. Thousands of houses were destroyed. It was estimated that the cost of the damages are over 400billion rupees, US$5 billion.
Almost half of Muzaffarabad, Pakistan Kashmir's main cities, homes were destroyed. Indian Kashmir was terribly affected as there hundreds of deaths and injured. Margalla Tower, a 10-storey building in Islamabad, collapsed and killed many people. This leads to an increased of death. Many unstable mountains in the Northern Pakistan caused landslides due to the earthquake.
There were 2 major hospitals being terribly damaged, the governments were working to set up a temporary hospital for the injured people. The Prime Minister, Shuakat Aziz, he wrote to the international community to ask them if they could send heavy-lifted helicopters, blankets, tents, medicine and hundred million of dollars to help for rebuilding the infrastructure. The president of Parkistan, called Washington, U.S President for help and they agreed to to help in any way they could.
I think if both the government and the people have preparedness; it can both minimize the extent of damages caused and the number of death. Also, the incident on the 10-storey building collapesd, tells us that they did not used proper building materials and have poor construction. I think the governments should planned activities on public preparedness, check that every building uses the appropriate materials and increased the standards of consrtuction to provide safety for the people from any other massive earthquake which struck the country again.
Reported by,
Tan Li Ting
19.2.10
Websites
http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0001439.html
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/2005Kashmirearthquake
http://www.drgeorgepc.com/Earthquake2005Pakistan.html
http://www.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/asiapcf /10/09/quake.asia/index.html
