‘It was a challenge like no other, the earthquake taught me a lot’
Within minutes of the earthquake, around 3.56am, the tehsildar of Ausa, Dnyanoba Khulari, followed by the then chief minister Sharad Pawar and guardian minister Vilasrao Deshmukh called me. Pawar, Deshmukh and I we were at the site in two hours.
We had never faced such an earthquake before. A couple of hundred deaths in any disaster would be a big challenge then — and here the toll had touched nearly 8,000. There was a huge controversy over the number of deaths as it was reported by some agencies that the toll was more than 25,000. Even we did not know how many had died. This led to the general notion that the state was hiding the death toll.
We collected the household census data to establish the number of family members. We made panchnamas of the victims and the list was put out publicly. After six months, we arrived at the toll of 7,917.
The earthquake taught me a lot. I was just 30 then. After the Latur quake, I went to the United Nations, represented the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) as the in-charge for rehabilitation after earthquakes in Haiti, Afghanisthan, and tsunami in Indonesia. All these earthquakes were similar in magnitude to that of Latur, but the casualties were fewer.
The earthquake in Ube, Japan, occurred immediately after Latur and measured 7.1 on the Richter Scale, but saw 2,000 deaths. In the Los Angeles quake, 74 people died. At International Strategy for Disaster Reduction, our slogan was “There are no natural disasters, all disasters are man-made.” This implied that the Latur casualties were more because the houses were not earthquake-resistant. We started designing houses with earthquake-resistant engineering, but differences emerged over the location for rehabilitation. The aftershocks which measured 4.2 on the Rich- ter Scale led people to think they were not safe in their villages. More than 1,000 villages had to be rehabilitated on in-situ basis. However, their relocation would have disturbed the historical structure of their habitat, and the villagers were not convinced. It took us a whole year to convince people for relocation within their own villages.
Another challenge was the design of the houses and people’s participation. After handing over the earthquake-resistant houses in the first phase, we realised villagers were not staying in them. The houses were used to tie cattle and store things. The owners preferred to reside in tin sheds built outside. Then we decided to involve people in constructing houses and supporting them. A village called Pardhewadi took shape in just two to three months with their participation. It proved to be a striking example for all agencies involved as we adopted this model to build more than one lakh houses in 2-3 years.
Handling the relief that poured in from across the globe was also challenging as there was a possibility of corruption. Personally also, it was very challenging, but we worked tirelessly for three months. Twenty five years later, the state machinery is now disasterready with full-proof plans at district and state levels.
Praveen Pardeshi is the additional chief secretary to the CM and was then the collector of Latur