Many people have been surprised to learn that the earthquake that struck Haiti last week, which measured 7.0 on the Richter scale, was the same severity as the 1989 San Francisco quake (also a 7.0). The scenarios afterward, however, couldn’t be more different: The San Fran quake left around 12,000 homeless and killed just 63 people. Haiti, meanwhile, has been thrown into utter chaos, with 1.5 million people potentially homeless and a death toll that is reportedly approaching 200,000. The crucial differences, of course, were building codes and access to emergency services. Time’s Bryan Walsh has reported on just how bad the codes and building practices in Haiti were:
Haiti, the poorest country in the western Hemisphere, had nothing — what building codes it had were unenforced, police and other emergency personnel were almost nonexistent and many of its people were already in ill health….
“Earthquakes don’t kill people,” says John Mutter, a seismologist and disaster expert at Columbia University’s Earth Institute. “Bad buildings kill them.” And Haiti had some of the worst buildings in world. There are building codes, but in a country that has been ranked as the 10th most corrupt in the world, enforcement is lax at best. The concrete blocks used to construct buildings in the capital are often handmade, and are of wildly varying quality. “In Haiti a block is maybe an eighth of the weight of a concrete block that you’d buy in the U.S.,” says Peter Haas, the executive director of the Appropriate Infrastructure Development Group (AIDG), an NGO that has worked on buildings in Haiti. “You end up providing buildings quickly and cheaply but at great risk.”
The poor construction practices were so pervasive that they even crossed class boundaries — while the poorly-constructed slums collapsed during the quake, so did Port-au-Prince’s luxury hotels and the UN’s mission headquarters. As such, a week later many Haitians are still struggling to find a safe place to seek shelter — who would want to sleep in a building that may still collapse, particularly since aftershocks are still occurring?
As for rebuilding, the paradox is that to simply rebuild would be a colossal mistake — the entire system needs to be overhauled, or else more sub-standard structures will go up to replace the old ones, making the country a sitting duck once again when the next hurricane or earthquake strikes. Walsh notes that rebuilding efforts can make use of innovations like building improvements for pre-fab housing, which make it tougher and more resistant to quakes. But, as with all building projects, these projects will take money. While relief efforts are still pouring in, it’s unclear how much of the foreign aid will go to simply restoring the population to some safety and order, and how much, if any of it will be leftover for rebuilding.
January 20th, 2010 at 1:53 pm
Haiti should be rehoused with shipping container homes…
January 20th, 2010 at 2:29 pm
[...] China’s quake in 2008 taking over 80,000 lives, and now Haiti. I am reading almost the exact comments about Haiti earthquake as I did two years ago about China. What is in common for the two cases? They are at the poorest [...]
January 20th, 2010 at 6:05 pm
I totally agree. In dealing with Haiti there have to be new paradigms in the design, approval and construction of all buildings. Refer to the following:
http://bildingblocks.blogspot.com/
January 20th, 2010 at 6:48 pm
Not just teh buildings, if one listens to the problems facing Port-au-Prince, other than replacing wooden structures with concrete it sounds like there is almost no infrastructure that we would normally think of as happening in teh 19th Century, fire, police (that are not feared) water, sewer, roads, electricity everything.
Rebuilding the shacks will not solve the problems long term, but damned if I know how anything would change. I’d swear that what I read about Haiti now sounds worse than what I read about it in my Geography of the Carrabean class in the mid-80’s. And you cannot blame it all on left leaning textbook publishers and profs.
January 20th, 2010 at 9:21 pm
[...] here, had no building codes to speak of. Buildings were constructed with substandard materials. The Infrastructurist has a short piece about the Time article as well. Clearly there is a dire need to supply, [...]
January 20th, 2010 at 9:23 pm
“Building codes” as a crucial difference? You must be joking.
Yes, bad buildings kill people. But people don’t live in substandard buildings because of poor building codes if they have a choice. The real crucial difference is wealth. Wealthy people can afford to live in well-made buildings. They can afford to buy insurance to help them recover from disasters. They can afford to pay a portion of their income to police and fire professionals to respond to emergencies.
The United States has a per-capita GDP of $47,500 compared to $1,300 for Haiti (PPP adjusted, per Wikipedia). That extra income buys a lot of safety choices for folks in the US that aren’t available to your average Haitian. Put another way, say Haiti’s building standards are instantly raised to US standards and properly enforced — how many Haitians can afford to comply?
January 20th, 2010 at 9:51 pm
“In Haiti a block is maybe an eighth of the weight of a concrete block that you’d buy in the U.S.,” says Peter Haas, the executive director of the Appropriate Infrastructure Development Group (AIDG)”
A concrete cinder block weighs about about 42 lbs (19 kg).
1/8 = 5.25 lbs (2.39 kg)
One-eighth seems way too small.
Dirt and water would weigh more and so would straight sand and water.
Unless the block is smaller, but you would just need more blocks.
What could these bricks be made of? Can’t be rocks, they are certainly too heavy.
Sounds like an exaggeration to me.
Matter of fact I found a better source:
http://www.redcounty.com/haiti-a-nation-built-sand-and-satan/35802
“My very good friend Norris has been to Haiti many many times and served as a missionary there. He told me that the homes, commercial buildings and public structures on Haiti are built primarily of cinder blocks. These cinder blocks are made of sand and concrete. The problem is the content of each is way out of proportion to make these blocks safe to build upon. The Haitians use a lot of sand and very little cement to make their blocks. The cinder blocks are primarily compressed sand. He said that when he first arrived there and was helping build a building he picked up one of these cinder blocks with one hand and it came apart, literally crumbling from it own weight.
Haiti has been built using walls of sand.”
They just don’t use enough cement. Weight is irrelevant, it is the cost of cement that matters.
January 20th, 2010 at 11:47 pm
I’m nitpicking, but wasn’t Loma Prieta a 6.9? Despite that, those are very humbling statistics.
January 21st, 2010 at 12:12 am
And why should they have codes for building earthquake proof buildings if the last strong one they got was 200 years ago?
Does the eastern US and midwest have strong earthquake code? What if another 8.0 hits Missouri, are the houses there built to withstand that? For some reason, I highly doubt it.
Places like San Francisco, Tokyo, Mexico City….they’re used to having earthquakes. If a big one hits every 10 years, of course you’ll build for it.
Places like Haiti, Kansas City, Boston, San Juan….they build for other things. San Juan does pretty well during hurricanes, because they expect them. When NYC gets a direct hit, then what happens?
Haiti probably wont get another big eartquake this century. They shouldnt waste money on earthquake codes.
January 21st, 2010 at 10:04 am
This is why we have Regulations in America. Everyone hates government regulations until there is an 8.0 Earthquake in Missouri or a dam break in New Orleans, then people scream and say “Why didn’t the government do something about this?” Well, republicans, it’s because you blocked the government from doing things like this all these years.
January 21st, 2010 at 1:44 pm
San Francisco, and California for that matter, are in a seismically active zone and have plenty of experience with earthquakes on a regular basis. Seismic standards for construction are reviewed on a regular basis, usually with each significant earthquake. They also have the resources to conduct those studies, experiment with new building codes and enforce those standards in new construction or in retro-fitting. Haiti, whose quake was the strongest in 200 years, is not in a seismically active zone and has none of the capabilities to create, follow or enforce California-like seismic standards.
January 21st, 2010 at 1:55 pm
As a future warning, do not forget Port Royal Jamaca was devastated by a similar sized earthquake in 1692. So completely was the town destroyed that eventually it was abandoned and the capital moved to Kingston. But back then I recall that the total loss of life was around 5000, extremely high for the era though.
Does make one wonder about the New Madrid quake, we are almost at the 200th Anniversary of it in 2012.
January 22nd, 2010 at 10:23 am
[...] architectural and building science implications of the earthquake in Haiti: The Infrastructurist on why so many buildings collapsed, when the destructive-but-not-catastrophic 1989 Loma Prieta Earthquake in CA was the same [...]
January 23rd, 2010 at 12:00 am
Just wanted to point out that the epicenter of the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake was some 70 miles south of the city of San Francisco. The Haiti quake I believe was less than 10 miles outside the city.
Yes, the buildings are still the story, but the Haiti quake was that much more destructive because it was so close to the center city and also very shallow.
January 23rd, 2010 at 12:29 am
The irony is that if they lived in tents like Bedoins they’d survive a 9.0 quake just fine. Also wood dwellings bend instead of breaking. As far as the weight of the blocks “the bigger they are the harder they fall” no? wouldn’t pumice blocks be better b/c they would not crush you if they fell on you.
They need steel supports with rolling bearings on the foundations.
I think wood would be suscetpible to powder post beetles and termites.
January 24th, 2010 at 5:23 pm
Future Schema wrote “Does the eastern US and midwest have strong earthquake code? What if another 8.0 hits Missouri, are the houses there built to withstand that? For some reason, I highly doubt it.”
In Missouri most houses use wood frame construction. People are much more likely to survive an earthquake in a flexible light weight home without slabs of concrete overhead.
The Central United States Earthquake Consortium (CUSEC) has made some effort in the New Madrid fault area to incorporate earthquake requirements into building standards. However, this would apply to fairly new construction in the last 15 to 30 years and there haven’t been any recent major earthquakes to test these building standards.
http://quake.usgs.gov/prepare/factsheets/NewMadrid/
January 25th, 2010 at 7:27 am
[...] unchecked free-market systems go, the issues are complex and deeply interconnected. So yes, while bad buildings kill people, not earthquakes, it is the perpetuation of poverty that continues to hamper poor nations’ ability to progress [...]
January 25th, 2010 at 9:59 am
[...] unchecked free-market systems go, the issues are complex and deeply interconnected. So yes, while bad buildings kill people, not earthquakes, it is the perpetuation of poverty (sometimes through aid itself) that continues to hamper poor [...]
February 3rd, 2010 at 12:21 pm
[...] reading the whole thing, along with the sources (1, 2) the Professor [...]
February 27th, 2010 at 10:11 pm
[...] deaths are actually caused by collapsing infrastructure; hence the oft-repeated statement, “Earthquakes don’t kill people, bad buildings do.” The earthquake body count, and the depth and breadth of hardship and economic disruption, depend on [...]
March 7th, 2010 at 6:07 pm
[...] their own homes, and such disaffection from the concern for their citizen’s well-being is the primary reason why a natural disaster displaced millions of people from a densely populated urban area in the year [...]