INDIAN EARTHQUAKES

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXII, Issue 22172, 27 July 1935, Page 17

INDIAN EARTHQUAKES

BENEFITS OF EXPERIENCE FUTURE BUILDING PLANS First-hand information concerning the Bihar-Nepal earthquake in January of last year was jgiven by Dr. J. A. Dunn, of the Geological Survey of India, in an address to the "Wellington Philosophical Society. The lecturer exhibited a series of lantern slides illustrating many features of this earthquake. After showing a number of views of the damage to elaborately designed buildings with ornamental features, he said the experience had been that the simpler the, construction the greater the resistance of the building to earthquake. Ornamentations and arches had no place in future buildings in India. Dr. Dunn said the Bihar-Nepal earthquake, which occurred in the afternoon, was centred about Northern Bihar, but the effects extended north into Nepal, south and west into the peninsular, and east into Bengal and Assam. The devastated region was investigated in a thorough manner by the Geological Survey of India. One of the most curious features of the earthquake was that over a belt 200 miles long and 20 miles wide the whole countryside slumped. From initial reports it was thought there had been a certain amount of uplift, but subsequent investigations showed this was not so. The damage to buildings in the slump belt was due not so much to the shaking as to the collapse of the ground and the foundations. Many of the buildings stood, but others subsided bodily in the ground.