Govt plans quake warning sirens in every building

NEW DELHI: The Union home ministry is working on a plan to install early warning sirens in all buildings of the country that may give a window of around 30 to 90 seconds, enough to save thousands of lives, for evacuations before a major earthquake hits.

The plan comes against the backdrop of a National Disaster Management Authority assessment that put 59 percent of Indian landmass in moderate-to-high intensity earthquake zones.

“This kind of early warning system is available in Japan which lies in major earthquake-prone zones. We have been told that under the system, the siren starts buzzing in case of an earthquake after sensors detect underground vibration,” said a home ministry official requesting anonymity.

The Japanese government officials will give a demonstration to the ministry of home affairs officials in July. The Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Roorkee is also giving a demonstration on a similar kind of early-warning system to the home ministry by the end of this month.

The MHA official said that they may get such sirens installed in earthquake-prone areas first.

Sensors deployed in Himalayas will instantly relay the information about a temblor to warning systems when they are set up

Connected by internet, the alert will be up to 90 seconds faster than the shockwaves that usually travel at a speed of 3km/second Sensors detect p-waves, which arrive seconds before the destructive shockwaves hit. A warning system will likely create an alert based on p-waves

“Basically the state government will have to act in this regard. We will ask them to make installation of such sirens mandatory,” the official added.

According Ashok Kumar – who heads the department of earthquake engineering at IIT Roorkee -- there are two types of early warning systems – onsite and regional (see box).

“Under a project from the ministry of earth sciences, we have installed 84 sensors connected to Bharat Sanchar Nigam phone towers

in high regions of Uttarakhand and Himachal to give an early warning of an earthquake,” said Kumar.

In case of a major quake in Himalayas, it will give a window of around 90 seconds to Delhi or 60 second to Meerut, said Kumar.

“Our system is already up and running. We are getting round the clock data from our sensors and all we need is to connect the system with sirens all across the region give an early warning of an earthquake,” added Dr Kumar.