As ever, ignorance is bliss. Who or what is tsunami? I asked a man who had graduated from a madrassah, and was confronted by a blank stare. But he is in good company. A man who had returned from Oxford thought it was a variety of sushi. The man from Cambridge recalled that it was the name of a svelte geisha of Osaka. A woman from Wellesley was frank enough to admit that she had no idea who or what he/she/it was.

Tsunami is a long high sea wave caused by an earthquake or other similar disturbances. The origin of the word dates from the late 19th century, a combination of the Japanese words "tsu" (harbour) and "nami" (wave).

Tsunami-generated earthquakes mostly occur at the three locations along the Indo-Pakistan coast: in and around the Andaman Sea; in an area approximately 500 kilometers SSW off Sri Lanka; along the Arabian Sea coast, approximately 70 to 100 kilometers south of the Pakistan coastline (which extends over 1,000 kilometers) off Karachi and Balochistan.

The oldest record of what now is termed a tsunami dates back to an earthquake near the Indus Delta in the Kutch region, circa 326 BC. History records that whilst Alexander the Great's mighty Macedonian fleet was returning to Greece after his partial invasion of India it was destroyed by an earthquake of a large magnitude.

Pakistan was hit by a major cyclone on May 20, 1999, unimaginatively code named "Tropical Cyclone 2A", which was responsible for the death of at least 400 people, and over 60,000 people were said to be missing at one time.

In a search for Tsunami + Arabian Sea on the internet, one reference is given on 'The Pakistan Cyclone, May 1999' recorded by the Accident and Disaster Information Service of the International Federation of Consulting Engineers (FIDIC). We are told that:

"Cyclone 2A reached the coast of the Arabian Sea with wind up to 270 kmh, and caused tsunami that submerged 600 coastal villages in Thatta and Badin district. The sea water gushed 10km inland of the coast. The Cyclone 2A is said to be the biggest cyclone to have hit this area in this century.

"At least 164 bodies were found from Raj Malik village in Thatta district. At least 100 fishermen were caught on their boat.

"The infrastructure for water and power supply was destroyed. Also the road and [tele-communications] were cut. The coastal area of Pakistan was completely isolated from other areas.

"The damages [to] crops and livestock were estimated to be tremendous. The officials said as many as 60,000 hectares of farmland were destroyed. In the Shah Bunder and Ketty area alone, 152,000 acres of farmland were lost.

"The huge dams upstream had weakened the flow of water in the Indus River, and some experts said that the change had made it easier for sea water to gush into the delta area with strong force . . . . . .

"At least 50,000 people were displaced to such areas as southern Sindh province. At one time, 13,000 people were living in a camp set up by the army. More than 65 tons of food were distributed to the victims in a week.

"Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif announced $1 million for the relief but the governor of the damaged province said that at least $6 million was needed.

"Many survivors complained that the rescue teams took too much time to arrive. Also, people attacked by the cyclone claimed that they never received any announcement for evacuation from the government.

"The Institute of Human Settlement and Environment has prepared a public safety plan so people will know what to do when they are hit by a cyclone."

Was the government of the day prepared to assist the people in distress? Was the government across the border, our Indian friends, equally unprepared? Yes, to both questions.

In India, scientists, geologists and engineers spent over two years painstakingly working on a study for the ministry of urban affairs and employment and produced a three-volume "Report of the Expert Group on Natural Disaster Prevention, Preparedness and Mitigation Having a Bearing on Housing and Related Infrastructure' which was published in 1998. One simple point made: "Disasters don't kill people, buildings do." And in India, as in Pakistan, the number of unsafe buildings is increasing every day. It is not a lack of construction standards but indifference to them that kills people.

After the Bhuj earthquake, the convenor of the Expert Group, T. N. Gupta, a professional, remarked, "Sadly, our work has been ignored, but that's the way things are in a developing country. Preparedness is not the policy in India. We respond to disasters only after they have taken place . . . . . . Whereas the earthquake in Latur in India killed 9,700 people an earthquake of the same intensity in California killed five."

Continuing the lament, the people of India complain that it is only now that editorial writers and columnists in their newspapers are venting their anger. The target of their wrath is the combination of unscrupulous builders and corrupt and negligent politicians. The Statesman, for example, in an editorial noted "Far from taking note of extra reinforcement and proper bonding of pillars, and weight-bearing walls, required for extra protection in earthquake zones, most buildings were death traps before people moved into them."

And from an editorial in The Financial Express: "The bigger tragedy is that a very large number of deaths were avoidable, and happened simply because of a culture of lining of pockets that is especially entrenched in municipal authorities and the building trade."

The Pioneer wrote to the point: "Those whose greed caused so many deaths must not be allowed to go scot free."

We move to Karachi. We are also advanced in our thinking and have a report on the seismic zoning of Karachi prepared by some of our professionals of no mean standing and published by the Association of Consulting Engineers of Pakistan (ACEP) in association with the Karachi Building Control Authority (KBCA). We too have our recommendations for the seismic design of buildings.

The writers and publishers have provided an 'Acceptance Criteria' which clearly states that the designation of Karachi in the most severe Seismic Zone IV by the well recognized Uniform Building Code in 1997 was found inconsistent and overrated by the geologists and engineers of Karachi. This they based on the local seismo-tectonic data. Consequently, two seismic committees were constituted by ACEP/KBCA in late 1999 and their report was published in April 2000. It has finally seen the light of day after the Bhuj earthquake and was recently launched by the KDA.

The Report states that Karachi is not in Seismic Zone IV but in II-B. But the question is, do our buildings conform to the requirements of even II-B?

Talking of death-traps, all we have to do is look at the 17-storey skeleton of an unauthorized commercial plaza which stands near the Nursery Market on our main artery, Sharea Faisal, It has stood for the past fifteen months. It is a monument to the corruption of the KDA/KBCA, and a sign of the betrayal of the citizens by the government and other institutions of the country in partnership with the builders and developers.

In April 1999, the KBCA admitted in the Sindh High Court that it has no way of establishing whether the construction being raised is safe and sound since the reports/tests accompanying the building plans submitted to it and approved by it bear no resemblance to the structure eventually raised. The safety and soundness of a building is not arbitrarily determined but is based upon the nature of the soil, the load, the structure and other factors. Yet the ex-parte status quo order granted on 16/12/1999 by Justices Saiduzzaman Siddiqui, Nasir Aslam Zahid, and Sheikh Riaz Ahmad of the Supreme Court, obtained through the not inconsiderable skills of Jadoogar of Jeddah Syed Sharifuddin Pirzada, is allowed by the KBCA to linger on unchallenged to this day. Over the past 20 years, the KBCA, in collaboration with the builders' mafia of Karachi, has become adept at passing the buck for illegal construction on to the judiciary. Should the illegal and potentially dangerous skeleton of the commercial plaza in question unfortunately fall as the result of an earthquake, who will be up for the long jump?

One bit of good news is that Omar, Air Marshal Asghar Khan's son and our minister in charge of the environment, is now concerned and is in the process of moving the government to appoint a dedicated Disaster Relief Commissioner for Karachi and Sindh. The name of an able strong man has been suggested to him and we must hope that young Omar moves quickly. The Relief Commissioner can, at no additional cost, pick men for his organization from the overstaffed KDA/KBCA/KMC.

What we cannot prevent, we must at least try to mitigate.