A powerful earthquake may hit the country anytime causing a loss of life of at least one lac people in the capital Dhaka due to fragile and faulty structure of the residential buildings and commercial centres.
"As geographically Bangladesh remains at the earthquake-prone zone and neighbouring countries are being hit frequently by powerful earthquakes, there is possibility for Bangladesh to experience a devastating earthquake", said VC of BRAC University Prof Jamilur Reza Chowdhury at a seminar titled " earthquake risk in Bangladesh and mitigatory measures" held in the capital on Monday.

He added that if an earthquake with the magnitude of 7 Richter scale hits the country, around one lac people will die and one-fourth buildings will collapse as the buildings were not constructed properly.
According to a Rajuk report, a number of 25, 000 buildings are vulnerable in the capital posing a serious threat to the life of the city dwellers. Meanwhile, other sources alleged that there are more such risky buildings and commercial centres in the capital that need to be demolished.
Maj MA Matiur Rahman representing fire-brigade, said they are not ready to face such challenge if any big earthquake hits the country because of not having sufficient manpower and equipments as there are only 600 forces and 193 fire-brigade centres across the country.

Md Mazidul Islam, a meteorologist of Bangladesh Metrological Department, said China at first invented a technology to detect possible earthquake and its magnitude half an hour prior to it but it took 10 years more to modify the technology and it is now capable of forecasting an earthquake before 20 minutes.
Meanwhile a keynote paper of Jamilur Reza Chowdhury stated that the low incidence of severe earthquakes during the last hundred years has led to a situation where most of the population and the policy-makers do not perceive seismic risks to be important. A seismic zoning map and detailed seismic design provisions have been incorporated in the Bangladesh National Building Code in 1993 but it should be updated.

It said as per new code-- RAJUK of architects and engineers involved in design and construction of buildings violating the code in Dhaka metro area will be punished. Now efforts have to be taken immediately to enforce it in other metropolitan areas, towns and urban centres in the country.
It added among the most vulnerable structures are the 4 to 5 storey buildings supported on unreinforced brick masonry walls (usually with 250mm thickness). These are gradually replacing the traditional low-rise structures (e.g. timber-framed lightweight houses in Sylhet) which have much better performance in case of earthquakes. Incorporation of these details in the brick masonry buildings (which require a very small increase in cost) would improve the performance significantly in case of earthquakes. BD national building also suggested earthquake resistant design of concrete and steel structure. Some major cities including Dhaka should be recognized as earthquake vulnerable areas.