POST-DISASTER HOUSING RECONSTRUCTION:
A Study of The Government of Pakistan’s Housing Reconstruction Programme in Azad Jammu & Kashmir after October 2005 Earthquake

Abstract

Qabil Ajmeri (an Urdu poet) once wrote:

وقت کرتاهے پرورش برسوں
حادثہ ایک دم نہيں ھوتا

Translation: Time nurtures for years
Accident is never sudden

Same is true for disasters; they just don’t happen suddenly. It is our actions (or inaction in certain cases) over the years that turn a hazard into a disaster. Development policies, governance system, disaster management system, poverty, and level of hazard are some of the most important factors that contribute towards disaster vulnerability. Most of the developing countries suffer higher disaster losses (as compared to the developed countries) due to their inability to properly address these factors. Societies need to have better development policies, good governance, efficient disaster management system, and improved livelihoods to minimise disaster vulnerability.

Conducted from the positionality (Robinson 2014) of a victim of the earthquake and an important functionary of the post-2005 earthquake reconstruction programme in AJK, this research is an auto-ethnographic study in order to understand how societies become vulnerable to natural disasters and what role post-disaster housing reconstruction can play in addressing this vulnerability. By loosely following Blaikie et al.’s (1994) ‘Pressure and Release’ (PAR) model and Collins’ (2009) “disaster and development approach”, this research attempts to find what factors made people vulnerable to seismic hazard in AJK and turned an otherwise not so big Mw=7.6 earthquake into one of the deadliest environmental disasters in the world. The performance and impact of the post-2005 earthquake housing reconstruction program is evaluated in this study by using the mixed-methods research approach. The study finds that the sustainability of the seismic resistant construction and continuation of the pre-earthquake vulnerability factors are still issues. Till the time issues mentioned in this study are not addressed properly, communities in general and the study area in particular will remain vulnerable to environmental disasters.