Disaster Recovery and the Road Ahead - IGNOU

c) For the repair of wall separation at the corners:
Fill up the crack with cement, sand (1 : 6) mortar
Put a 4-5 meter long rectangular wire mesh on both sides of cracks inside the room,
similarly put 7-8 meter long rectangular wire mesh on both the sides of the cracks outside
the room as mentioned in point (b). For best results, the wire mesh must be connected
with nut and bolt across the wall
Provide adequate diagonal bracing in frame type construction, both in the vertical and
horizontal planes along both the principal axis of the building
Secure the internal faces of in-fill walls to the columns
Use reinforced masonry such as brick walls, hollows, concrete block masonry, sandwich
walls etc.
Avoid using large sheets of glass in windows
Use glazing bars or mullions for windows or doors
Use holds-fasts to anchor the door and window frames to the wall or columns
Keep the bolting or locking device of the door and window shutters simple and strong
Remember always, anchoring and bracing are the keys to structural resilience. Basic principles that
go into making the houses seismically viable are location, setting, layout, design and material. These
assist in achieving desirable properties of ductility, deformability and damageability.
DID YOU KNOW?
Traditional wisdom in construction of earthquake-resistant houses can still be revisited,
as traditional houses were inherently earthquake-resistant:
The Building Technology in ‘Sumers’
The Sumers are ascribed to the Rajput families of Rajasthan in India. They built the
Sumers to function as watchtowers and to provide for the defence of all the families
living in an area, rather than for the protection of a single family. Structures comparable
to the ‘Sumer’, with some variations have also been reported from Pakistan, Afghanistan
and Nepal, all in the Himalayan – Karakoram earthquake-prone zone.
The indigenously devised building technology, which was used to erect Sumers, made
use of locally available resources such as long thick wooden logs, stones, slates and clay
to specification. The structure of the ‘Sumer’ rested upon this platform.
The four walls of the structure were thus raised using the wooden logs and dressed up
flat stones alternately. The structure was further reinforced with the help of wooden
beams fixed alternately that ran from the middle of the walls of one side to the other,
intersecting at the centre. This arrangement divided the ‘Sumer’ into 4 equal parts from
within and provided for joists supporting the floorboards in each floor of the building.
Specially designed wooden ladders provided access to the different floors, which were
located within the ‘Sumer’. The roof of the ‘Sumer’ was laid with slate stones.
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