Building owners tight-lipped on quake damage
Building owners tight-lipped on quake damage
JAKARTA (JP): Managements of high rise buildings tend to be
closed mouthed about damage caused in the earthquakes Monday, a
city construction consultant said.
A member of the city's advisory team on building construction
said yesterday this was holding up the listing of quake damage.
"It will cause a loss to the managements themselves if they
are not open about damage," H.R. Sijabat said. The city's team
could not give the appropriate recommendations on repairs were
without reports from managements, he said.
"We only have media reports about which buildings were
damaged, and we are checking them now," he said.
Jakarta is ranked fourth, in terms of danger, in Indonesia's
six earthquake zones, the first is Irian Jaya, so another
earthquake is likely to be moderate.
But he said records showed Jakarta was hit by a stronger
earthquake in 1903. Experts at the Geophysical and Meteorological
Agency say earthquakes cannot be predicted.
Following the earthquake that struck around 3:05 p.m. Monday,
several buildings including a hotel, an apartment, two banks and
private office buildings, reportedly had cracks.
Sijabat estimated that less than 10 percent of Jakarta's at
least 300 high-rise buildings were damaged.
"But the earthquake on Monday should not have even caused
cracks," Sijabat said. In a similar tone Wiratman Wangsadinata,
another member of the advisory team, had said the quake would
have to be 15 times the intensity of Monday's quake for buildings
to be near collapse point.
The epicenter of the quake, measuring 6 on the Richter scale,
was 300 kilometers south west of here and 33 kilometers under the
Indian Ocean. In Jakarta the intensity, recorded at four to five
Modified Mercalli Intensity, should only have caused rattling
furniture, swaying lamps, moving parked cars and other minor
effects.
Design
Sijabat and Wiratman said all Jakarta's buildings were
designed to withstand far worse quakes. The first regulations
enforcing earthquake proof design were issued in 1972 and were
revised several times to 1987.
"If there are deep cracks in buildings from Monday's tremors
there must be something wrong with their construction," Sijabat
said.
All buildings, especially the high-rise ones, should have met
the standard earthquake safety requirements in their construction
plans before the construction permit was issued.
Sijabat refused to say yesterday whether there were any
indications of corruption by officials in charge of issuing the
permits.
The advisory team is in charge of checking all proposed
building designs prior to the issuing of building permits.
"What is important is that building managements are willing to
repair and improve their structures," he said.
Building inhabitants and the public would also feel more
secure if managements were open and they knew improvements were
being made, Sijabat said.
Because of the closed behavior of managements, Sijabat said he
could not say when the team would complete their inventory, and
whether it could be publicly announced.
The earthquake in Kobe, Japan, in January 1995, caused more
than 5,000 deaths, mainly because building owners had been too
lazy to improve their buildings, he said. This was in spite of
already having had expert's recommendations to do so, and despite
living in an earthquake-prone area, he said.
Wiratman said Thursday the city should have all its old
buildings checked, particularly those built before 1971.
Sijabat noted several old buildings proved to have withstood
earthquakes. The oldest buildings on Jl. M.H. Thamrin include
Hotel Indonesia and Wisma Nusantara.
He said earthquake-resistant building plans should pay
attention to symmetry among columns and the ratio of a building's
width and length. If a building collapses in an earthquake, the
design regulations ensure that the building collapses in such a
way that survivors should be able to be pulled out alive, and
lifts should automatically switch off at the first tremor,
Sijabat said. (anr)