In the Wake of the Sunday Temblor

Sitting in Gangtok, it is possible to get lulled into believing that normalcy has been restored in Sikkim. The reference here is obviously to the Sunday evening earthquake. Gangtok was rattled, its people unnerved, but apart from the few injuries sustained in the panic which accompanies earthquakes, the capital got away cheap. Many, this newspaper included, had often speculated that Gangtok would be levelled if any temblor substantially stronger than 6 on the Richter Scale hit Sikkim. That did not happen. And now, with electricity restored, internet connectivity returned and water supply trickling back, the capital emanates a false sense of security, even invincibility [with reference to its building practises]. Admittedly, the nerves are still jumpy, but it appears that the sense of loss is not commensurate to what has happened. What is worrying is that if Gangtok does not realise the devastation which has visited Sikkim, it will also not adopt long-term corrective measures required to ensure that the future is better fortified against natural calamities.
The earthquake might have spared Gangtok its ferocity, but the rest of Sikkim has been devastated. Two days since the earthquake, the worst hit areas of North Sikkim, which are not even remote, have not even been reached with outside help. Areas like Chungthang and places further north like Lachen and Lachung and the isolated Dokpas of the Cold Desert remain cut off. While Chungthang, which hosts an under-construction mega hydel project, has suffered the most, this sub-divisional headquarter town battles the situation on its own, without power supply, without telephones and sans any external aid [the first detail of army personnel from Gangtok was flown in only on Tuesday].
News of people killed in landslides triggered by the earthquake in the more remote parts of Sikkim are only getting confirmed now, too late for a State as small as Sikkim; and the casualty list is not even complete yet and grows with each passing day. New disasters are being discovered two days since the temblor and Sikkim is already looking at a mind-boggling trail of destruction. After the traumatised affected people are reached and attended to, the process of rebuilding will begin. That will present a new set of challenges of which funds will be the minor concern. The State will need to prioritise its restoration process and rethink how it approaches infrastructure creation. Gangtok might not have suffered the horror of watching a building topple over, but the fact that so many of its residents had more confidence in the dark and wet night in the open than their own habitations, says a lot about how secure its constructions are. Official estimates put the number of completely damaged houses at 1,000 and partially damaged at One lakh. A worryingly high number of schools have been damaged, many irreparably so. Sikkim should be grateful that the earthquake took place on a Sunday evening. The number of injured, even killed, had the quake arrived during working hours of a working day would have been unimaginable. But even as Sikkim sends up gracious prayers for having been spared that horror, it will need to rebuild a huge number of schools.
The challenges facing Sikkim are so many that they should be dealt one at a time in this space in the coming days. To begin with, it is necessary that the planners, even as they take stock of the scale of devastation, review the effectiveness of its disaster management and mitigation plans and processes. Disaster Management Plans, press releases have often claimed, have been worked down to the ward level. Their effectiveness has been brought to question in how people and their organisations responded to the calamity. There was too much confusion, too little information and unnervingly absent communication in the wake of the earthquake. And this was the scenario in Gangtok. One can only imagine the kind of panic that must have gripped other parts. Natural phenomenon like earthquakes cannot be prevented, but their impact can be mitigated. The planners, people’s organisations and institutions in Sikkim can show that they learnt something from the Sunday evening reminder by collaborating to create strong and effective civil defence and disaster response teams at their respective locality levels. However, if Gangtok gets suckered into a false sense of security, this will not happen... but earthquakes and other forms of natural disasters will continue to...
And please, get more responsible experts to study seismic activity in Sikkim. IIT Kharagpur, the nodal agency studying earthquakes in Eastern India [including Sikkim] remains offensively silent when Sikkim could have used their “expert analysis” at least so that its people could understand what happened here better.