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)