Documents Related to the Pakistan Earthquake Response in 2005

Soon after the 2005 earthquake, national policies specified reliable construction technique for self-builders. With the time and some people’s hard work, other options have been studied and acknowledged.
Reinforced Masonry
The first proposed technique was a set of (presumably) easy and (relatively) low-cost recommendations about contemporary masonry. The aim was to avoid use of too much concrete, which would have often exceeded self-builder’s budget.
The principle is as follows: the (...)

Lefkas (Greece) folk have developed an original type of earthquake resistant construction, which can widely inspire our work about Batar (wood-reinforced stone masonry).

It was long since planned that we should provide the communities with toolkits. We first ran an experiment on six selected villages, and only once it was assessed we green lit the purchase of seventy kits. Distribution is now 70% through.

Since several months, trained teams of committed masons, carpenters and social workers hike in the highs of Batagram (North-West Frontier Province of Pakistan) in order to teach earthquake-resistance technique to local self-builders.