Earthquake in New Zealand

It doesn't make much news in the front pages of the world's leading newspapers except for it's exotic greenery, laid back lifestyle and quality of life. When I was studying at a leading University in NZ I still vividly remember about one of my classroom sessions.

It was a paper on International Business. I am not sure how this thing came up but our faculty asked the classroom audience who would like to be the Prime Minister of New Zealand not even a single hand went up but then he again asked us who wants to be the President of the United States and a sea of hands went up. It seemed like a unanimous opinion.

Strange as it may seem, New Zealand suddenly found itself on the front page and that was for the wrong reasons. Don't get me wrong but this was due to an 7.2 earthquake which hit the south island. Christchurch bore the brunt of devastation and as I am writing this, there was a mild earthquake which struck places close to wellington.

If you look at the fault lines prevalent across countries/continents, New Zealand is right up there with so many severe fault lines and lots of volcanoes, thankfully many of which are dormant. California where I live and work has had it's share of earthquakes and the one I experienced last week was 3.1 on richter scale.

An earthquake on a scale of 7.0 and above is considered to be devastating but luckily except for a few injured people, no lives were lost. Now some experts have attributed this to the good building codes adapted by New Zealand around 10 years ago. If that's true, it's really a praise worthy effort and an investment which has really paid off.

There are lessons to be learnt here especially as the population in developing countries migrates increasingly towards Urban areas. In India where the major cities are experiencing population growth and high rise residential areas which are springing up everywhere this is one particular area of concern. The building codes are rarely followed or brazenly flouted. Now imagine, god forbid if something of this sort happens it will be a humanitarian disaster.

The Govt does realize something must be done and a government wing National Disaster Management Authority has released ads on television which instruct the citizens on how to deal with a earthquake but the effort still falls short. More needs to be done on the ground so that when the crunch comes loss of human lives and damage to property is minimized. In this instance at least one can derive the right lessons from NZ's experience.

(Image courtesy: http://www.tourism.org.nz/imgs/nz-map-regional.gif)