Quake risk for Jakarta 'very high'
Zakki Hakim, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
In the event of a strong earthquake with its epicenter near Jakarta, the damage to buildings and resulting casualties would be far worse than in cities such as Tokyo or Vancouver, a report from the Agency for the Assessment and Application of Technology (BPPT) shows.
The Global Earthquake Safety Initiative (GESI) report shows that in terms of "potential for buildings to kill people in a strong earthquake", Jakarta's risk-rating was "very high". Jakarta ranked 11th out of the 21 earthquake-prone cities surveyed around the world (No. 1 the most dangerous, 21 the safest), with Tokyo at 18 and Vancouver at 20.
The report, which was a result of cooperation between BPPT and GeoHazard International (GHI), supported by the UN, was made to get a complete picture of the risks here.
Heru Sri Naryanto, head of the BPPT's Disaster Mitigation Technology Department, told The Jakarta Post on Monday that the report showed that Jakarta had a disturbingly high risk of casualties if a major quake were to hit.
It estimates that there is a 10 percent chance that many buildings in Jakarta would collapse due to an earthquake and kill up to 10,000 people sometime in the next 50 years.
Heru said that the risk was too high and disturbing, considering that Jakarta had experienced a large number of weaker tremors in recent years.
He added that last Wednesday's earthquake -- centered some 300 kilometers away and measuring a mere 5.5 on the Richter scale -- could have toppled many buildings if the epicenter was nearby, because they had been built on unstable land, or in places where the groundwater had been depleted.
He said that his agency had forwarded the report to the city administration, and now it was up to the officials to take preventive measures, such as imposing strict building requirements, in order to significantly reduce risks.
However, he doubted that the administration alone had the ability to take appropriate measures fast enough, therefore, assistance from the people, especially building tenants, was needed to boost the risk-reducing efforts.
Placidus Petrus, country coordinator for the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA), an international codes and standards organization, told the Post that tenants should urge their building owners or management to comply with all international safety standards for their own protection.
However, Gunawan Yonatan, associate director of the property company PT Procon Indah, said that tall buildings in the capital were strong enough to withstand earthquakes because they were all designed to cope with certain levels of jolts.
He said that the city administration would not issue permits for high rise structures to be built unless the design included anti-quake measures.
He added that history had shown us that earthquakes in the capital were never strong enough to cause significant damage to high rise buildings.