Haaretz newspaper is reporting today that the earthquake disaster which recently hit Haiti can — indeed, will — also inevitably happen in Israel.
Avi Shapira, chairman of the National Earthquake Preparedness Committee, who just returned from Haiti and addressed a special Knesset (Parliament) committee on Tuesday, said that “An earthquake of the same magnitude as the one two weeks ago in Haiti or stronger is certain to strike Israel … [and] ‘What happened there will also happen here’.”
According to the Haaretz report, Shapira “warned that hospitals are not prepared for such a disaster and that, according to his estimates, most buildings constructed before 1980 would not withstand a quake … ‘The situation is not optimal’, Shapira told the committee comprising members of the Foreign Affairs and Defense and Interior and Environment committees”.
The Jerusalem Post reported that Dr. Avi Shapira, who was representing the Infrastructure Ministry, also said that “what is killing these people are the buildings. I have serious reservations about the term ‘natural disaster.’ It is the buildings that turned into death traps.” The JPost report on the Knesset meeting, which was called to discuss how to strengthen Israel’s infrastructure to withstand such a catastrophe, is posted here.
Shapira’s estimates, however, are less alarmist than those of other Israeli experts, according to the Haaretz report: “Previous estimates held that 40 to 50 percent of residential buildings in Israel were not constructed in accordance with guidelines meant to prevent damage in case of an earthquake. However, Shapira said the actual number is closer to 20 percent. Israel has been struck by minor quakes and tremors in recent years that have caused no casualties. The last major earthquake to strike the area was in 1927. It had a magnitude of more than 6 and killed 500 people. Israeli experts have said that because of population growth and high-rise construction, an earthquake of the same magnitude today would kill more than 18,000 people”. This Haaretz report is published here.
UPDATE: In a new and fuller report on the Knesset committee meeting published on Wednesday 27 January, the Jerusalem Post added that in “the most likely large quake scenario, the committee predicted 16,000 dead, 6,000 severely injured, 377,000 displaced, 10,000 buildings destroyed and 20,000 buildings heavily damaged. Although the steering committee began examining readiness for such a scenario in December 1999, participants in Tuesday’s meeting highlighted the fields in which the country was still completely unprepared”…
Yesterday, on our previous post here, we commented on the disaster-in-the-making in the Palestinian areas of East Jerusalem and nearby Ramallah, where helter-skelter construction in the past couple of years have converted a small provincial summer vacation town into the near-metropolis that is serving — at least for the moment — as the de facto capital of the Palestinian Authority.
If — or perhaps it would be more accurate to say when — an earthquake disaster hits, the shifting political borders will not make any distinction…
UPDATE: And, we should add, there are NO LOCAL AUTHORITIES in any of the Palestinian areas that are capable or that can deal with any such emergency. And, there is apparently no coordination with Israeli authorities. No Palestinian representatives were invited to this Knesset committee meeting (though, it is true, some may have hesitated to attend…) Now, Israeli ambulances only enter Palestinian areas of Jerusalem with a police escort — and that will surely be impossible in the event of such a catastrophe…
The JPost article of 27 January reported that Shapiro said in the meeting: ” ‘We must internalize the lesson that what will kill people is not the earthquake itself … What kills people are the buildings. Death will occur as a result of building collapse, meaning that it is a man-made tragedy. There is a continued failure to build stable buildings, turning buildings into death traps’ … According to Ya’acov Bar-Lavi of the Mapping Center of Israel, 96,000 residential buildings are at risk of collapsing during a strong earthquake. The Building Contractors Association presented a position paper to the MKs, in which it warned that 1 million apartments and thousands of public buildings are likely to collapse. Its representative argued that the current government program, known as Plan 38, will not drastically improve Israel’s earthquake readiness, as only a few dozen buildings nationwide have been reinforced since it went into effect. Israel’s response to such a disaster is set to be coordinated by the National Emergency Authority, a body that received its mandate in April 2007. The NEA’s representatives at Tuesday’s meeting gave an overview of the response that will be offered by the military, and went on to describe local government as the ‘cornerstone’ of the plan, with mayors coordinating immediate aid. But Sharon Azriel, deputy to the chairman of the Union of Local Authorities, complained that the plans had not been backed up with the budgetary allocations necessary for them to serve as the ‘cornerstone’.” This new JPost report is published here.