Expert wrote to Andaman govt, but no action taken

<div class="section1"><div class="Normal" style="" text-align:="" center=""><span style="" font-family:="" times="" new="" roman=""><img src="/photo/975414.cms" alt="/photo/975414.cms" border="0" /></span></div> <div class="Normal"><br />PUNE: Could the colossal death and destruction caused by Sunday''s tsunami in the Andamans have been reduced by heeding the repeated warnings issued to the Andaman and Nicobar administration by a Pune-based seismologist as early as August 2004?<br /><br />Following five earthquakes that shook the Andaman and Nicobar islands on July 29, ranging in magnitude from 5.0 to 5.9 on the Richter scale, Pune-based seismologist Arun Bapat had written to the Lt.Governor of the islands stressing the necessity of "seismic surveillance and earthquake awareness in the Andamans".<br /><br />In his email of August 2, 2004, to Lt. Governor Ram Kapse, Bapat emphasised that the five quakes needed to be "examined seriously". "This may perhaps be foreshocks of a big seismic jolt," he had written in his letter.<br /><br />Bapat, who retired in 1998 as head of the Earthquake Engineering Research Division of the Central Water and Power Research Station (CWPRS), pointed out that for the last one-and-a-half years, he had been writing to the Lt. Governor''s office "about the urgent necessity of creating seismic awareness in the region".<br /><br />"I was in the USA last year and I still continued to write to you. But it seems that you are very busy with some other works and I could not hear from you. I request that this letter of mine receive the desired attention," he pleaded in his August 2 letter, sent by email to the Lt. Governor''s personal assistant.</div> <div class="Normal" style="" text-align:="" center=""><script language="javascript">doweshowbellyad=0; </script></div> <div class="Normal"><br /></div> </div><div class="section2"><div class="Normal">The email stated categorically that it was "extremely necessary to undertake ‘seismic vulnerability assessment'' of the region immediately."<br /><br />Stating that he was already advising a number of states on earthquake related problems, Bapat urged the Lt. Governor to "circulate material connected with earthquake disaster mitigation".<br /><br />Bapat told TNN that it is truly a tragedy that he never heard from the governor and that his early warnings and appeals were ignored by the Andaman and Nicobar administration.</div> </div>