Earthquake Aftershocks on CNN

All news channels are currently flooded with news about the Worst South Asian Earthquake in past more than 100 years... and so does CNN... my only TV news source now a day... :-( here are some observations....

The short interview of Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf was good example opportunism in my opinion. In his speech he put whole emphasize on “Cargo Helicopters” and gave all reasons for it. Speech made direct request to US... and after speech was about to get over he made a brief mention of other things.....Tents...Blankets...and Medicines... Of course there is absolute need of Heavy Cargo Choppers given the in accessibility of mountain areas but... how does is sound to put that thing forward ahead of essential things and stressing it more than everything else?

I have never seen the weather forecast on CNN giving any information about Middle East... or SAARC countries....or South America. Their world begins with US... then Europe... then Africa... and then directly to Japan and eastern China coast. But thanks to the quake.... now every now and then one happens to see the weather forecast for India and Pakistan; of course at the expense of Africa...

During business news Asian markets means NIKKEI, Hang Seng and Straits. There is no place for BSE on the main screen... it only appears in the right corner small scroll bar. KSE (Karachi Stock Exchange) is nowhere.... but again... now we occasionally see these two indexes too... mainly when they discuss financial impacts and all.....

The most interesting observation is about “The Building”...“Margallah Towers” in Islamabad. All Initial news was concentrated about the collapse of one wing of this building complex. All video footage showed this building only. As if all the 18000-19000 casualties (till that time) were all buried under the rubble of this building. And as if all rescue efforts were carried out at the same “Ground Zero”. I wonder if this collapse brought back the Sep 11 memories back... and so it was at the center of the news.

But more interesting than the news focus was the analysis of the building collapse. Because out of a whole complex of many 10 storey buildings; only one collapsed. That too was the newest one. The analysis began with fundamental reasons like negligence of seismic forces during structure design or Faulty architecture etc and it concluded with more common causes like Faulty workmanship and use of substandard materials by the construction company. This is something we are all familiar with.

This highlights the grave danger Mumbai is in. When we see around many such substandard Buildings I can not even dream of similar quake in Mumbai. I m sure the toll will be much higher in this single city that the entire toll of this current quake.

One should not forget that Mumbai and Thane area is situated near fault lines and has a “Good” history of quakes and a fairly high risk given the quality of construction. Just go through the Presentation at above link and the projections of deaths and injuries it makes. When you read above link you may require help of these links on MMI and MSK