A moderate earthquake that rattled Bangladesh on Friday is a stark warning of the devastation a stronger jolt could unleash on the capital, engineers and commentators cautioned, citing years of under-enforcement of building codes, congested streets, and fire risks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The quake\u2019s epicentre was near Madhabdi<\/strong>, about 13km<\/strong> from the Agargaon Seismic Center. Bangladesh\u2019s Seismic Observatory and Research Center measured it at magnitude 5.7<\/strong>, while U.S. monitoring put it at 5.5<\/strong>. At least 10 people<\/strong> died and hundreds<\/strong> were injured\u2014many in stampedes or after leaping from buildings\u2014officials and hospital sources said. Cracks appeared across structures, several buildings tilted, a power facility caught fire, ground fissures opened, and household items crashed from shelves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Writer and editor Anisul Hoque<\/strong> called the tremor a \u201cwarning shot,\u201d arguing that a 6.0<\/strong>-class event could trigger a citywide catastrophe in Dhaka, with building collapses compounded by simultaneous fires and blocked roads. He cited structural engineer Shamimuzzaman Bosunia<\/strong>, who warned in a September interview that \u201cexcept a few, almost all buildings are vulnerable\u201d<\/strong> to a major earthquake due to poor design, weak enforcement, and aging stock along multiple regional fault systems, including the Dauki Fault<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Fire, not collapse alone, could drive the worst losses, Hoque and disaster specialists said. They pointed to recent urban emergencies\u2014such as the Oct 20, 2025<\/strong> airport cargo-warehouse blaze, the Bongo Bazar<\/strong> market inferno (Apr 2023), and explosions at Siddique Bazar<\/strong> and Science Lab<\/strong>\u2014as evidence that even single-site incidents can overwhelm response capacity. In a major quake, \u201cdozens of fires at once\u201d could ignite from ruptured gas lines and damaged wiring, they warned, while debris, fallen poles, and crowds would choke access.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A joint CDMP\u2013JICA<\/strong> assessment (2009) projected that a \u22657.0<\/strong> event affecting Dhaka could collapse 72,000 buildings<\/strong>, damage 135,000<\/strong> more, and generate 70 million tonnes<\/strong> of debris. Despite investments\u2014about Tk 220 crore<\/strong> in rescue equipment (2019) and Tk 2,300 crore<\/strong> for broader preparedness\u2014former Fire Service chief Ali Ahmed Khan<\/strong> has described national readiness as \u201cvery inadequate.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Urban planners say long-standing vulnerabilities persist: filled-in lakes and waterbodies, violations of the DAP<\/strong> plan, limited soil testing, scarce earthquake-resistant retrofits, blocked or absent emergency exits, no citywide hydrant network<\/strong>, infrequent drills, hazardous chemical storage in dense markets, and narrow lanes impassable to ambulances and ladder trucks. Crowd control routinely impedes firefighting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Hoque argued that Bangladesh faces a \u201cred alert\u201d<\/strong> and urged a whole-of-society pivot from ad-hoc reaction to rule-of-law enforcement, strict building safety, inspections, hydrant installation, evacuation planning, and transit corridors<\/strong> reserved for emergency vehicles. He invoked a now-iconic image of a child wrapping a leaking fire hose with plastic\u2014symbolic, he said, of public courage amid systemic failure\u2014before warning that courage alone cannot stave off a seismic \u201cmega-emergency.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Seismologists note that Bangladesh and its border regions experience frequent low-magnitude tremors; the real danger lies in the compounding effects<\/strong> of a strong shock on a dense, infrastructure-strained metropolis. Friday\u2019s quake, they say, offered one more chance to act before<\/strong> the earth delivers a harsher test.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A moderate earthquake that rattled Bangladesh on Friday is a stark warning of the devastation a stronger jolt could unleash on the capital, engineers and commentators cautioned, citing years of under-enforcement of building codes, congested streets, and fire risks. The quake\u2019s epicentre was near Madhabdi, about 13km from the Agargaon Seismic Center. Bangladesh\u2019s Seismic Observatory […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":6699,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6697","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-5"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hernet.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6697","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hernet.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hernet.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hernet.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hernet.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6697"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/hernet.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6697\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6704,"href":"https:\/\/hernet.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6697\/revisions\/6704"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hernet.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/6699"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hernet.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6697"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hernet.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6697"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hernet.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6697"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}