AP IMPACT: Delhi Ignores Own Quake Peril Warnings The ramshackle neighborhoods of northeast Delhi are home to 2.2 million people packed along narrow alleys. Buildings are made from a single layer of brick. Extra floors are added to dilapidated buildings not meant to handle their weight. Tangles of electrical cables hang precariously everywhere. If a major earthquake were to strike India's seismically vulnerable capital, these neighborhoods - India's most crowded - would collapse into an apocalyptic nightmare. Waters from the nearby Yamuna River would turn the water-soaked subsoil to jelly, which would intensify the shaking. The Indian government knows this and has done almost nothing about it. An Associated Press examination of government documents spanning five decades reveals a pattern of warnings and recommendations that have been widely disregarded. Successive governments made plans and promises to prepare for a major earthquake in the city of 16.7 million, only to abandon them each time. The Delhi government's own estimates say nine out of every 10 buildings in the city are at risk of moderate or significant quake damage, yet the basic disaster response plan it had promised to complete nearly three years ago remains unfinished, there are nearly no earthquake awareness drills in schools and offices and tens of thousands of housing units are built every year without any earthquake safety checks. In this Dec. 20, 2011 photo, commuters move past congested houses built close to each other in India's most crowded northeast district of New Delhi, India. If a major earthquake were to strike India's seismically vulnerable capital, this neighborhood, home to 2.2 million people and India's most crowded district, would likely collapse into an apocalyptic nightmare. (AP Photo/Manish Swarup) Close Fearing many of the city's buildings could lie in ruins after a quake, the Delhi government began work in 2005 with U.S. government assistance to reinforce just five buildings - including a school and a hospital - it would need to begin a rudimentary relief operation to deal with the dead, wounded and homeless. Six years later, only one of those buildings is earthquake-ready. "At the end of the day, people at the helm of affairs are not doing anything," said Anup Karanth, an earthquake engineering expert. In its attitudes to disaster preparedness India is like many other poor nations - aware of the danger but bogged down by both sheer inertia and more immediate demands on its resources. But Delhi faces immense earthquake risks. Last September, two minor jolts sent thousands of scared residents into the streets, and experts say a big one looms on the horizon. As far back as 1960, after a moderate quake cut power and plunged Delhi - then a city of 2.7 million - into darkness, the Geological Survey of India advised that all large buildings in the capital needed to have a plan for earthquake safety. A series of reports by other agencies have expanded on that conclusion in recent years, but both the city and national governments have ignored almost all of the recommendations. Some reports were ignored because of sheer apathy, others because of shifting priorities. In a city and country growing at lightning speed with huge problems of poverty and hunger that need more immediate solutions, earthquake preparedness has simply never been at the top of the list. Some plans begun with good intentions simply fell by the wayside. That's what happened to the 2005 plan to prepare five important buildings in the capital for an earthquake.