Study Investigation and Documentation Regarding Collapse of Margalla Towers

Abstract

At 8:52 am on 8th October 2005, Margalla Towers, the plush, high rise apartment complex in the heart of Islamabad came down within seconds due to a catastrophic earthquake, killing 74 people, rendering 148 homeless and destroying the lives of thousands forever. Like everything else, the story of Margalla Towers has all the great ingredients. Greed, dishonesty, negligence, corruption, indifference, falsehood and the list goes on and on. The history sheet of Margalla Towers reads like a criminal record, yet nothing seems to move those who have a great deal of power to rectify the great harm done to so many innocent people. There is convincing evidence that the Margalla Towers were absolutely unfit to be inhabited and that complaints about its shoddy structure were raised as early as 1993, just two years after the project was first made public by the CDA. The residents who petitioned CDA about the faulty towers were simply ignored. Photographic evidence was dismissed. Floors were added without proper structural support and a building which was flawed in design, built with substandard materials and in gross violation of laid down minimum standards was allowed to go up and even given a satisfactory completion certification by the CDA, the independent consultants who raised alarm bells 12 years before the towers collapsed were simply removed by the CDA and told to take a hike yet its fall only raised clouds of dust and the wails of distressed families. This thesis aims to find the faults in the architectural and structural designing and construction of the Margalla Towers in the light of the engineering studies that ultimately resulted in its collapse.