Analysis of Safety Measures in Old Government Schools Building for Multi Hazards. A Case Study of Hashtnagri, District Peshawar

Abstract

Natural disasters are all always sudden and fluctuating processes that remain a risk to sustainable socio-economic development around the world. Safety measures play crucial role in coping with disasters therefore, safety management in schools is essential because it guarantees the safety of students, teachers and other staff and stuff of the schools. School play an important role in socioeconomic development of the nation. Therefore, to analyze the safety measures different government high schools were surveyed at district Peshawar, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. After surveying different government high schools, two schools i-e Shaheed Hasnain Sharif No.1 and Shaheed Osama Zafar Centennial Model High School No.2 were selected for analysis because of high vulnerability to multi hazards. The leading objectives of this qualitative study were to conduct multi hazard risk assessment of the government schools building using UN-Habitat Tool, secondly to assess the impacts of hazards on school buildings and finally to identify the necessary actions to strengthen the schools building capacity. Based on this study, it was found that, due to weak architectural design and non-structural elements the school buildings are vulnerable to both fire and seismic hazard. The study revealed that facilities and equipment were not fully protected and majority of the unit’s lack fire extinguisher equipment. There was no emergency response team and no evacuation centers were properly identified to cope with sudden event like an earthquake and explosion. The fire and earthquake will cause extreme damages to building and loss of lives if occurred therefore, the School buildings need preventive measures against the fire and seismic actions. In addition, teacher staff and students had not received any training about disaster or seismic management and fire emergency management and were unaware of the use of fire extinguishers.