Building building codes

October 2: The violent strike by the earthquake on September has finally opened up Druk vision for setting building standards and codes to avoid any further disaster in future.

A team of Bhutanese engineers have visited the disaster hit areas in eastern districts this week to assess the situation and to study the technical fault lines that caused so much damaged in six rural districts.

Besides have absence of the national building standards, Bhutan also has no officials records of any hazardous seismic zones in the country.

The new effort on technical studies might help Bhutan to point out most hazardous areas and avoid settlement or any infrastructure building in such areas.

This team from the department of geology and mines, standard and quality control division and works and human settlement ministry observed in the field that there were structural flaws in many private homes as well as government infrastructure.

The September 21 earthquake affected at least 3,747 houses, of which, about 1,183 are non-repairable. 12 people died and other 35 injured.

There are about 24,500 households in the six eastern districts. About 89 schools and institutes and 29 health centers have also been affected. The government targets rebuild 22 schools and 6 health center.

Of the 326 chortens affected, 190 were non-repairable. 219 lhakhangs were damaged of which 72 need to be rebuilt. About 90 dungkhag offices, RNR centers and gup offices have been affected.