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GHI in Dharamsala, India
Dr. Janise Rodgers and Hari Kumar of GHI undertook a fact-finding mission in May to determine the
personnel and resources needed to conduct a seismic assessment of the Library of Tibetan Works and
Archives and other structures of the Tibetan exile community in Dharamsala, India. Based on their
report, we received in June a grant of $25,000 from the Flora Family Foundation to make an initial
structural assessment of these buildings. Located in the Himalayan foothills in northern India, near
the epicenter of the great 1905 Kangra earthquake, this community is at serious earthquake risk. We
view this work as a stepping stone toward broader efforts with the dispersed Tibetan people.
View of the setting of UpperC (McLeod Ganj).
Note steep slopes and peaks of the Dhauladhar Range approximately 17,000 feet) that indicate the proximity
of active faults.
School Earthquake Safety for Pakistan and the Economic Cooperation Organization
Since the devastating Pakistan earthquake on October 8, 2005, we have been in close contact
with colleagues in Pakistan (including Abid Shaban, a member of GHI's Advisory Board) and here
in the United States regarding ways in which GHI might help improve earthquake safety in the
region. To date, we have focused on two activities. Together with the Organization for Economic
Cooperation and Development (OECD) and Turkey's Ministry of National Education we co-organized a
workshop held in Istanbul (June 1-2) on school earthquake safety for representatives of the
Economic Cooperation Organization (ECO). ECO comprises the 10 countries bounded by Turkey on the
west, Pakistan on the east, Kazakhstan on the north and Iran on the south. For this workshop,
Serkan Bozkurt, a GHI consultant sponsored by Swiss RE, helped us estimate the number of people
in ECO who have the same earthquake risk as the people in northern Pakistan: of the 380 million
people in the region, 180 million have northern Pakistan's risk, of which 40 million are school-aged
children. We hope to start a program to improve school earthquake safety in ECO similar to the one
we helped start in OECD. Our second focus is in Pakistan. Just last week Tom Tobin, GHI's COO, returned
from a trip to Pakistan that was sponsored by the U.S. National Academy of Sciences with the purpose of
recommending how the U.S. government can best help Pakistan manage its earthquake risk. We hope that we
will have an opportunity to apply some of the experience in GHI's network to Pakistan's most evident
needs.
I close by sending you my best wishes and my deep appreciation for your support. It may not be evident
to each of you how important your various contributions are, but truly it is the moral, fiscal and
technical support you provide that enables us to continue.
Sincerely,
Brian Tucker, President
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