BHUBANESWAR: For all its positives, Bhubaneswar is a sitting duck if a natural disaster strikes. Be if cyclonic wind or earthquake, Bhubaneswar’s vulnerability is multi-fold because the risks are one too many.
The Local Resilience Action Plan (LRAP) developed by World Bank in partnership with IT services major RMSI points at serious loss to the City caused by such catastrophes. The LRAP has been developed for Bhubaneswar as well as Cuttack and presented to the State Government earlier this week.
According to the catastrophe risk assessment study, although Bhubaneswar falls in moderate damage risk zone on the seismic map of India, at least one percent area is categorised as extremely susceptible while 19 percent is highly vulnertable to serious damage. About 29 percent area lay in the medium susceptibility category.
Even though the City is located on Earthquake Zone-III, it is the high density of residential buildings which makes its more vulnerable to damage and loss. The LRAP says that about 34 percent residential built-up areas constituting about 33 percent of residential houses are in the extreme and high earthquake risk zones of the City. More than half of Wards 30 and 38 of Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation come under the extreme and high earthquake risk categories.
Besides, the impact of an earthquake could be felt most in commercial areas which are concentrated in central parts while industries are in the fringe areas of Bhubaneswar. The study says, about 56 percent of the commercial areas come under both extreme and high cyclone risk categories.
If that is not all, at least 85 percent of commercial areas are seen as vulnerable to extreme and high flooding and 60 percent of it is also prone to earthquake hazard. Forty-eight percent of industrial areas are in the high risk category so far as earthquake is concerned. Similarly, a large segment of industrial areas are also concentrated in the extreme risk areas for both cyclone and flood.
A similar report prepared by UNDP in December had suggested that in the event of an earthquake, at least a population of 55,000 would be affectred by an earthquake while the number of casualties could be around 2,000 in the City.
The analysis of exposure to vulnerability shows that a population of five lakh in the City live in the extreme, high and medium earthquake risk zones. For cyclonic storm, the numbers are higher.
The disaster resilience study says the vulnerability of the City is determined mostly by the large slum population as they are most exposed to natural disasters. In Bhubaneswar where 36 percent of the population lives in the slums, social vulnerability is a critical factor, it adds.