Published: 08:27 AM, 26 November 2025 Last Update: 08:42 AM, 26 November 2025
Dhaka on the Faultline: Why Recurring Earthquakes Expose a Decades-Long Failure of Governance
Bangladesh did not merely experience a geological event on 21 November—it confronted a long-ignored truth. Within a span of 31 hours, the country absorbed four earthquakes, one of which left 10 people dead, more than 600 injured, and exposed the fragility of the nation’s preparedness. What should have been a wake-up call instead became another entry in the familiar cycle of panic, headlines, and institutional silence. This is not a story about tectonic plates alone. It is a story about political inertia, centralized urban planning gone wrong, and a dangerous denial of risk by those responsible for safeguarding 180 million people. The tragedy is not that Bangladesh is seismically vulnerable. The tragedy is that concerned authorities have known this for decades—and still behave as if earthquakes are anomalies rather than inevitabilities.
The core assumption that usually emerges from our concerned authorities after every tremor: “We will improve preparedness.” This phrase is a political reflex, not a strategy. Because the reality is more fundamental—Dhaka is not designed to survive a major earthquake. It is a megacity built like a trap. These structural truths define the risk:
Dhaka is hyper-centralized in an era that demands decentralization: Over 25 million people live in an urban cluster built on soft alluvial soil, surrounded by narrow roads, saturated with unregulated high-rises, and dependent on overburdened emergency services. One major blockage, one collapsed building, one broken bridge—and the entire emergency response grid would freeze.
Compliance is theoretical; enforcement is optional: Bangladesh National Building Code (BNBC) was revised to integrate seismic considerations. But regulations without enforcement are architecture fiction. Thousands of buildings in Dhaka were constructed without soil-testing, lack proper column reinforcement, use substandard materials, have illegal vertical extensions, sit on foundations incapable of withstanding lateral motion. The core problem is structural, not incidental.
Institutional oversight is fragmented and reactive: Disaster management bodies, local government authorities, city corporations, RAJUK, and fire service often operate in parallel lanes. None possesses a unified earthquake-response chain of command. In a crisis, parallel lanes become collision courses. Unless these truths are addressed head-on, every earthquake will become a national gamble.
It can be said that recurring Earthquakes are not ‘freak events’. It is intellectually dishonest—and strategically dangerous—to treat the November sequence as isolated incidents. Bangladesh sits beside the Indo-Burma subduction zone, one of the most active tectonic margins in the world. Recurrence is not a surprise; the surprise is our refusal to treat recurrence as a signal. The recent pattern reveals these critical shifts:
Frequency is increasing: Multiple tremors in short intervals indicate the regional stress accumulation is alive, active, and unpredictable.
Urban vulnerability is accelerating: Infrastructures built decades ago are aging without retrofitting; new structures are rising without oversight.
Public panic is now a national psychological risk: Dhaka’s residents evacuate buildings with every tremor. Students faint in classrooms. Workplaces halt operations. Mass panic can be as dangerous as the quake itself. Ignoring these signals is institutional negligence.
After each earthquake, the response from concerned authorities follows a repetitive choreography: announce an investigation, conduct a few visible inspections, promise stronger enforcement, allow public memory to fade. This is not disaster management—this is disaster public relations.
The core blind spots in this regard include:
RAJUK’s regulatory gap is not a gap—it is a canyon: RAJUK’s mandate to regulate building safety has eroded due to politicization, understaffing, corruption, and institutional fatigue. Without fundamental restructuring, RAJUK cannot perform seismic governance.
Universities and research institutes are sidelined: Bangladesh possesses strong geological and engineering expertise at BUET, CUET, and specialized institutes. Yet policymaking rarely integrates academic modeling or seismic risk assessments. Science exists; policy ignores it.
Fire Service and Civil Defense lacks seismic response capability: This force remains heroic but under-resourced.
For a city of Dhaka’s density: equipment is outdated, rescue training is insufficient, road width prevents access, and high-rise rescue capacity remains minimal. We have to realize the reality that we cannot fight a 21st-century disaster with 20th-century tools.
Disaster preparedness is treated as a document, not a discipline: Bangladesh has well-written frameworks. But preparedness does not live in documents—it lives in drills, enforcement, urban design, and political will.
Dhaka must not remain the political, economic, administrative, and population black hole. It must be decentralized. The refusal to decentralize is the single greatest reason Bangladesh remains earthquake-vulnerable. Why? Because concentration multiplies impact. The nation depends on Dhaka for administration, finance, media, healthcare, transportation, higher education, industry and commerce. A catastrophic earthquake in Dhaka would not just be a disaster for the city—it would incapacitate the entire country. This over-centralization is a policy choice, not a geographical destiny. Successive governments feared political inconvenience more than seismic inevitability. The solution is not to evacuate Dhaka—but to rebalance Bangladesh.
Three Strategic Shifts Bangladesh Must Make Immediately
Move toward functional decentralization, not rhetorical decentralization: Bangladesh does not need slogans; it needs structural redistribution.
Key steps include:
•Shift major ministries to regional hubs (Chattogram, Rajshahi, Khulna).
• Incentivize corporate and media headquarters outside Dhaka.
• Expand public universities into research-focused satellite campuses across districts.
• Establish regional emergency command centers with autonomous authority.
This creates national resilience by preventing national paralysis.
Launch a nationwide seismic audit—then make retrofitting mandatory: The audit should classify structures into:
Green: structurally sound
Amber: requiring reinforcement
Red: unsafe and uninhabitable
Bangladesh must adopt a hard policy: No green certification, no occupancy permit. This policy must prioritize in hospitals, schools, colleges and universities, government buildings, residential high-rises, commercial hubs. Without retrofitting, preparedness is fiction.
Professionalize RAJUK or replace it: A high-impact reform must include: digitizing all approvals and inspections, introducing third-party structural verification, criminal liability for unsafe construction, removing political interference, creating an Earthquake Risk Authority with multidisciplinary oversight. If RAJUK cannot reform, it must be dissolved and replaced with a technocratic regulatory body.
Now, to save Bangladesh from destructive earthquakes, strategic clarity is essential. Bangladesh must operate on three timelines: Immediate, Medium-term, and Long-term.
Immediate Actions (3–6 months)
· Conduct evacuation and safety drills in all schools and major offices
· Train emergency services in urban search-and-rescue simulations
· Enforce a strict ban on illegal building expansions
· Activate a unified national earthquake information center
· Issue guidelines for building owners on emergency preparedness
Medium-Term Actions (1–3 years)
· Retrofitting of public buildings
· Establishing satellite emergency bases in Savar, Narayanganj and Gazipur
· Integrating seismic sensors across high-risk zones
· Creating legally binding accountability for structural engineers
· Overhauling building code enforcement with digital transparency
Long-Term Actions (5–10 years)
· Transforming secondary cities into self-sufficient urban ecosystems
· Redesigning Dhaka’s transportation corridors for emergency mobility
· Incentivizing low-rise, low-density housing
· Expanding industrial belts outside Dhaka to reduce migration pressure
· Creating a national culture of safety through education and public awareness
Earthquakes do not kill by themselves; they kill when infrastructure collapses, when governance fails, and when authorities choose complacency over responsibility. Bangladesh stands at a crossroads: either it treats the recent events as another tremor, or as a turning point in its national planning philosophy. The panic among Dhaka residents is not irrational—it is the rational response of a population that knows the city is unprepared. Trust in institutions is not created by press briefings; it is created by visible, structural action.
Japan, Chile, and Turkey did not reduce earthquake casualties by praying for fewer quakes—they did it by building a culture of seismic responsibility. Bangladesh can do the same, but it requires abandoning two deeply rooted habits: the habit of centralizing everything in Dhaka, and the habit of waiting for disaster to dictate reform. Preparedness is the only path to national continuity. Decentralization is the only path to national safety. Bangladesh must choose whether it wants to remain structurally vulnerable—or become structurally resilient. Earthquakes do not wait for political comfort. They do not negotiate. They do not forgive indecision. The recent recurrent earthquakes across countrywide were not warnings; they were deadlines.
If Bangladesh acts now, it can transform panic into preparedness, vulnerability into resilience, and tragedy into a catalyst for national renewal. If it does not, the question is not if a catastrophe will happen—but when.
Emran Emon is a journalist,
columnist and a global
affairs analyst.
