The government needs to prioritise projects to improve the capability of emergency services to deal with the risk of earthquakes hitting the country.
After 2015’s severe earthquake in Nepal jolted Bangladesh last April, fire services in Dhaka began keeping life-saving equipment outside their own buildings, because they were deemed at risk of collapse from major tremors.
While some investment is now being made in new buildings, the pace of efforts to improve emergency services needs to be urgently sped up.
Nationally, there is still only around one fully trained fire-fighter and rescuer for every 30,000 people. The fire service also remains deeply under-resourced with the entire capital city and Dhaka division having only four fully-equipped rescuer-vans for its 25 million people.
Even more worrying, there is little evidence of co-ordination and training to improve preparedness.
Severe doubts exists, for example, about the ability of utility providers and transport services to keep power, gas, water supplies, and roads functioning to enable help to be provided to victims.
The threat level is increased by the large number of poorly constructed buildings prevalent in the country. These need to be modified as a matter of urgency as part of efforts to ensure all buildings are constructed to be as earthquake resistant as possible.
More investment also needs to be made in equipment, training, and planning to ensure more back-ups are available to keep rescuer and medical services running in the event of disasters.
The government should apply lessons learned in countries such as Japan on ways to prepare for earthquakes, and to build up public awareness and safety precautions.
It also needs to build up the capacity of the nation’s emergency services and improve planning so the country is better prepared to save lives and keep utilities running when disaster strikes.
Source: Dhaka Tribune
