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Olivia McGill, The Guardian, 6th October 2006
GOAL UK brought emergency relief - then started training
local builders in earthquake-resistant construction. Olivia McGill
reports.
On Sunday it will be exactly a year since Pakistani
Kashmir was shattered by an earthquake. Almost 80,000 people were
killed and 4 million made homeless.
It has been a year in which GOAL UK was in the forefront
of efforts to help survivors in the Bagh region. The international
aid and development agency has wrapped up its Bagh operation, in
which it spent almost £5m and distributed £2m more in
non-food supplies.
The contribution of Andy Cox, an engineer from Abergavenny,
was vital in the long and difficult relief operation. He worked
as GOAL's shelter engineer.
In Bagh, 90% of the infrastructure was destroyed.
As winter closed in on the survivors, many more would have died
if shelter had not been built.
The survivors did not want to leave their homes and
GOAL helped them to stay, showing them how to build weatherproof
shelters by combining material it provided with salvage from wrecked
buildings. This stopped the extreme weather driving families downhill
into crowded camps, with the attendant risks of disease.
In the 10 months that GOAL spent in Pakistan, GOAL
volunteers built 20 demonstration shelters and provided corrugated
iron sheeting, washers and nails. Locals constructed their own temporary
winter shelter based on the GOAL examples, combining materials supplied
by GOAL with timber and tin recycled from fallen houses.
Beneficiaries - over 10,000 families in all - received
plastic sheeting for use as insulation and flooring. This complemented
winter tents and blankets as part of a winter survival package for
Kashmiris.
Mr Cox was no stranger to Pakistan. In the 1990s he
worked as a consulting engineer for five years with a large charity
organisation in Hunza, northern Pakistan, rebuilding the Baltit
Fort in Karimabad. His duties involved assessing the structural
condition, designing remedial works and producing construction drawings,
detailed reports, specifications and bills of quantities for use
by contractors.
"When I heard about the earthquake I wanted to
do something to help," Mr Cox said.
He was directed to GOAL by RedR, an agency that matches
technical experts to relief agencies and began its existence in
the 1980s as Registered Engineers for Disaster Relief. GOAL quickly
took Mr Cox on.
"With other organisations there seemed to be
delays getting going but with GOAL things happened quickly, which
made a big difference," he said. "I had previous experience
putting teams together with minimum interference and GOAL knew that,
so gave me free rein to get the work done, which I appreciated."
Mr Cox has worked in contracting and consulting on
construction projects throughout the UK and Asia, mainly in the
fields of building, bridge investigation and repair and geotechnical
engineering. He has worked for several consulting engineering practices,
investigating building defects and designing solutions.
In 2000, he established Ascend (Cymru) Ltd, based
in London, an engineering consultancy specialising in difficult
locations.
Like many who have tasted the rewards of working in
the voluntary sector, he would like to go back.
"I love Pakistan," he said. "It's my
favorite place to visit, though it's more difficult now as there
are so many dangers. You've got to be careful. I would love to take
my kids back there. When my children are a bit older and I have
less financial responsibilities I want to go back to this type of
work."
GOAL funded a series of four-day workshops in Bagh
district to train masons and carpenters in building earthquake-resistant
houses. Nearly 300 craftsmen were trained in earthquake-resistant
design by Kubilay Hicyilmaz, a British earthquake engineer working
for GOAL.
At first, over Christmas and into January, Mr Hicyilmaz
worked with the general relief operation, helping to shelter the
thousands of homeless in the area, as well as doing damage assessment.
After January he was able to concentrate on setting up a training
programme to teach earthquake engineering principles.
He blames the high death toll in Pakistan on the way
houses were built.
"As the cliché goes, earthquakes don't
kill people, buildings do," he said.
As people rebuild, it is vital that they know how to make the new
buildings earthquake-resistant.
Before the earthquake, few people in Bagh knew their
homes were on unsafe ground. Houses rarely had structural bracing
and many walls were built of round, uncut stones packed with mud.
The larger concrete buildings had inadequate steel support. These
structures collapsed easily.
This lack of awareness of sound building practices
had a high price - it contributed to more than 8,100 deaths in Bagh.
"We went to each union council where GOAL is
operational as well as Bagh and Islamabad," said Mr Hicyilmaz.
"We told them we were coming and that we needed masons and
carpenters, as well as steel fixers for more urban areas. GOAL's
logistics team came with 7,500 bricks and a huge amount if timber
and reinforcement bars. We started by setting up a classroom.
"Craftsmen first learned the causes of earthquakes,
then how to select the proper site for a home and how to safely
align a structure on that site. The second day of the workshop was
devoted to timber construction, the third to masonry and the fourth
to reinforced concrete construction. This continuum ensured that
workers developed a well-rounded understanding of safe practices.
"Those who completed all four days received
a certificate and 1,000 rupees, slightly above the prevailing daily
wage."
Communities where the workshops were held gave the
GOAL trainers sites visible from a main road on which to build the
earthquake-safe demonstration structures for others to study.
GOAL later ran workshops for other non-governmental
organisations working in the area. Mr Hicyilmaz believes that GOAL
and a Nepalese NGO, Inset, were the only relief agencies that had
engineers in Pakistan.
"There were only two NGOs that addressed the
cause of the problem rather than just dealing with the fallout,"
he said.
While Mr Hicyilmaz is relatively new to the voluntary
sector, he has kept an active interest in the NGO community and
in Pakistan. He also works regularly for an NGO in Indonesia on
repairing damage done by the tsunami.
He says that NGOs' commitment to reconstruction is
undoubted, but often they find themselves acting as construction
companies without the necessary expertise.
"They need people to insist on correct specifications
and materials in reconstruction," he said.
He describes governments' response to the earthquake
in Pakistan as shortsighted.
"Reconstruction takes years," he said. "Governments
need to pay engineers to implement it properly.
"The main challenge for me in Pakistan was to
get through to decision makers that they need to spend some money
on engineering.
"For example after the earthquake a doctor might
know that 3% of the people will have a broken arm or leg, but he
doesn't know which ones so he has to examine each individual. It's
the same with the construction sector.
"Among the damaged buildings we don't know which
ones are safe, reparable, should be rebuilt or have very little
damage done to them.
"There was a reluctance to spend money on this
kind of assessment; there were instances of buildings without a
crack in them not being used by anybody because people were afraid.
"I hope things are changing and governments
are recognising the importance of engineers in earthquake-sensitive
areas."
GOAL UK urgently needs engineers. If you are interested
you can find out more and meet engineers who have worked with GOAL
at an information evening in London on October 19th 2006. To book,
e-mail Laura Byrne or call
020 7631 3196.
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