Meghalaya Govt to constitute team for safety audit of bldgs

The Meghalaya government has will constitute a dedicated team of professionals to conduct safety audits of all buildings, including lifeline buildings like hospitals and schools, Chief Minister Mukul Sangma said.
The decision was taken following frequent tremors rocking Meghalaya and the NE region as a whole.
"We will constitute a team which will be dedicated for urban centres like Shillong, Tura and other areas where we feel priority needs to be given," Sangma told reporters yesterday.
He said an order in this regard had been issued to the Chief Secretary.
"The process will be in a time-bound manner and ensure corrective measures required to be taken," Sangma said.

According to the Chief Minister, the team would be drawn from all backgrounds including structural design engineers to ensure all buildings, specially hospitals were properly audited.

Referring to the 1897 Shillong earthquake, he said "It is very important for us to take things with utmost urgency with the instances of frequent earthquakes."
"If the frequency becomes too much then it should be taken as an alarm... We should look at professional auditing with people drawn from all backgrounds - structural design engineers and others," Sangma said.
The Chief Minister said direction would be given to all departments to ensure buildings and infrastructures constructed must be capable of integrating the concerns from structural design point of view, keeping in mind the safety aspects.

Meghalaya has felt at least 16 tremors of the 44 earthquakes measuring over 5 on the Richter scale across the world this year, according to the officials at the Regional Seismological Centre here.