Haiti Earthquake Disaster

[kenneal - lagger]

Haiti, like Zimbabwe is one of the countries in the world where regime change would be a good thing, but they don't have oil. Much of any aid and loans goes into the Swiss bank accounts of government leaders and is charged to the country..

Concrete buildings are fine in earthquakes, if they are built with sufficient racking resistance. This requires the correct amount of reinforcing steel and sufficient infilling blocks between the framing members. In poorer countries both of these are omitted to save money.

Many of the buildings in Haiti are of adobe construction, not concrete, according to a news report.

[Mark]

Sorry Ken, but in these situations 'Low Tech' solutions are needed.....

There's been quite a bit of work going on in Peru on this subject.
Peru rebuilds two years on from quake:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/8201971.stm

Since 1970, Peru has been hit by five powerful and deadly earthquakes. The latest struck Peru's coast exactly two years ago with a magnitude of 8.0 on the Richter scale. It fiercely shook the capital Lima, but its devastating epicentre was about 200km (124 miles) to the south, near the town of Pisco, a small fishing port built largely of adobe - mud bricks which Peruvians have used for thousands of years. More than 500 people were killed and about 75,000 homes were left uninhabitable.

For Peruvian engineer Marcial Blondet, it was the devastating quake in 1970 that first motivated him to develop earthquake-resistant buildings, particularly for those who could least afford them. Some 70,000 people died in the mountainous region of Huaraz, many of them in an avalanche of snow, ice and rock which obliterated the town of Yungay. It was the deadliest earthquake in Latin American history.

"Adobe and earthquakes are a perverse and tragic combination," says Mr Blondet. "We are right in the middle of the most seismic area in the world. We've had many, many huge quakes and we are still waiting for the super big one." "But a very large percentage of the people here are poor, so adobe is the only thing they can use to build their homes. Unfortunately, that's the case for millions of people in seismic zones around the world."

During more than 35 years of research, Mr Blondet and his team have tried a range of natural and industrial materials to try to reinforce weak mud-brick structures. Bamboo cane was one option, but there is not enough of it. The people on the street are killed by the walls that fall out, the people inside are killed by the roof that falls in. Mud-brick structures are tested vigorously on shaking tables which simulate earthquakes in the structural engineering laboratory at Lima's Catholic University. Watching the simulations, it is easy to see just why adobe houses, home to about 40% of Peruvians, are such death-traps. First a vertical crack appears, then the outer wall falls outwards, before the other walls crumble and the roof caves in.

"The people on the street are killed by the walls that fall out, the people inside are killed by the roof that falls in. It's terrible," says Mr Blondet. "No-one should live in a house that behaves like this. A house is a place where we go when we want to feel protected and safe, so it's unbearable, completely unacceptable - an abomination - that your house kills you."

Finally, Mr Blondet and his team found a solution in an industrial plastic mesh used by mining companies to hold back earth on slopes. It is strong, cheap and easy to use. Securely enveloping a normal mud-brick home in the mesh can prevent the walls from collapsing in an earthquake. The building wobbles but it does not fall down. However, taking this simple technology and putting it into practice has been a slower process.

Mensias is a small village of agricultural workers set amid fields of artichokes in rural Chincha, just north of Pisco. Everyone here lost their home in the 2007 earthquake. Unlike much of the surrounding area - which has seen precious little reconstruction in the past two years - here there is a quiet sense of purpose and hope. Groups of families are still living in makeshift shelters made of chipboard and plastic sheeting but new, improved homes are being constructed where the old ones stood. Everyone gets involved. The men lay the mud bricks for the walls and crushed bamboo on the roofs while the women stitch the plastic mesh on to the walls under the watchful eye of an engineer.

"It's the best house we've ever had," says Margarita Ramirez, who with her husband, Daniel, and their four-year-old son, Jair, has just moved into the new, bright orange reinforced adobe home which they began building in March. Everyone in the community of Mensias has been involved in rebuilding. "Before in the shelter we lived with insects and rats and our son suffered with the intense cold at night. Now my family's safe and warm," she says. "At first we were afraid to build with adobe again after our last house was destroyed. But the engineers assured us that even with a strong earthquake, the mesh would prevent the walls from collapsing."

Nearby in San Aurelio, community leader Maria Magdalena Delgadillo stands proudly outside her new home, one of 34 in an open courtyard. With the help of the development charity Care and a donation of 20,000 adobe bricks from a government agency, the community built the new earthquake-resistant homes in five months. But its residents, mainly agricultural workers who earn Peru's minimum wage of about $50 (£30) per week, could never have done it alone. Care, working with 13 other non-government organisations, has helped build 900 quake-proof homes and plans to complete 2,500 more by the end of 2010, says Milo Stanojevich, the charity's Peru director.

The Peruvian government - widely criticised for its chaotic reconstruction efforts - passed a supreme decree in April making the reinforced adobe homes project a national programme for rural Peru, at the cost of about $600 (£360) per family. "The way I see it is this is the first large-scale application of earthquake technology being put into practice," says Mr Stanojevich.

It may be the first step towards a long-term policy to reduce the devastating human and economic cost of earthquakes in Peru. But with more than 40,000 people still homeless two years on from the quake, Peru's government is on the defensive. Villagers in Chincha and elsewhere earn less than $50 a week as labourers. Francis Allison, Peru's fourth housing minister in three years, admitted there had been mistakes and promised that local people would start to see improvements by the end of the year. He blamed the Reconstruction Fund for the South (Forsur), a public-private entity created after the quake, for focusing too much on infrastructure and not enough on rebuilding homes. He said the regional authorities should focus on rebuilding infrastructure but some of them were working "incredibly slowly". Crippling bureaucracy and corruption are routinely blamed for the frustratingly slow pace of the reconstruction.

Many of the quake's victims had high expectations of a government which, in the aftermath of the quake, enjoyed a booming economy and received an impressive amount of international aid. Soon after the disaster, the government gave out about 28,000 donations of $2,000 (£1,200) to affected families to buy building materials. But people in Peru have a "short seismic memory", says Marcial Blondet. Thousands of people have already rebuilt without using earthquake-resistant technology, laying the foundations for the next tragedy.

[Andy Hunt]

After the tsunami, Earthship designs were used to construct temporary homes for the survivors on Andaman, the rainwater harvesting designs etc meant that people had fresh water in areas where all of the infrastructure was gone.

Plus of course they could be built out of readily available materials which were lying around after the tsunami - old tyres, tin cans, mud etc.

http://www.earthship.net/component/rsga ... ry/16.html

[Vortex]

Just heard a radio interview:

Some US survivors were trapped under a collapsed hotel and were found by some locals ... who did NOT tell anyone.

They were only rescued when one of them managed to yell to passing French firemen a long time later.

[kenneal - lagger]

I wasn't suggesting that concrete or any other material should be used. I was saying that the improper use of any material leads to failure. Timber buildings can fail just as well as concrete although concrete doesn't burn when is falls over into the cooking fire.

The Haitians are going to rebuild in the materials that they have readily available and wood isn't one of those materials. Just look at the aerial pictures above in this thread. There is hardly a tree in Haiti and they aren't going to wait 13 years for them to grow. Earth is the most common building material in the world because it is one of the most widely available, although not all earth is suitable for building with. I know how good a building material earth is because I have built, and currently live in, my own house of earth.

[2 As and a B]

Just heard a radio interview:

Some US survivors were trapped under a collapsed hotel and were found by some locals ... who did NOT tell anyone.

They were only rescued when one of them managed to yell to passing French firemen a long time later.

I heard that interview as well. No one said or suggested the Haitians didn't tell anyone - except Vortex, who delights in denigrating the Haitians from his distant position of ignorance.

What the survivor actually said was that some French firemen arrived and said "We're here to rescue you" which to me suggested that they had been told exactly where the trapped people were.

Or were you there Vortex?

[biffvernon]

Here's a comment from another forum

Despite living in Italy, a supossedly modern European country with a great deal of experience in earthquakes, the standard here is massive concrete reinforced beams all around - it's the law! Apparently, post L'Aquila, they are now considering the possiblity of some new craze of buildings that are resistant to earthquakes: houses made from wood! It will be a few years before authority is granted to use such techniques and then probably a generation before it is widely accepted by the populous.

My Itilain friend who has a wood importing business has failed for years to get planning permission for a wooden house. AND we've got loads of oak right here!

If Italy can't be educated what chance Haiti?

[Vortex]

Just heard a radio interview:

Some US survivors were trapped under a collapsed hotel and were found by some locals ... who did NOT tell anyone.

They were only rescued when one of them managed to yell to passing French firemen a long time later.

I heard that interview as well. No one said or suggested the Haitians didn't tell anyone - except Vortex, who delights in denigrating the Haitians from his distant position of ignorance.

What the survivor actually said was that some French firemen arrived and said "We're here to rescue you" which to me suggested that they had been told exactly where the trapped people were.

Or were you there Vortex?

That's not what I heard - but maybe I missed that.

What I DID read was that a female office worker later made a small opening and attracted some rescuers. I received the impression that THIS was what saved the group.

As for denigrating Haitians, no .. but it IS a failed state, with the associated problems.

[biffvernon]

it IS a failed state.

And whose fault is that? We can certainly rule out half the population because they are children. And almost all the other half because they are too poor to have control over anything beyond daily survival.

(I wonder what England would be like if a third of the population became homeless this afternoon and 2% died.)

[2 As and a B]

It may be a "failed state", whatever that means, but the reports on the ground coming out of Haiti this past week have shown a resilient people with a very strong sense of community. One report that particularly struck me was of drinking water supplies being broken into and hoses used to fill the buckets, cans, etc. of Haitians WAITING IN QUEUES.

There certainly was violence in Haiti, pre-earthquake. However there are now some thousands of escaped prisoners back on the streets, so to compare now with pre-earthquake violence is not fair.

And for jonny2mad's benefit, the Haitians were not habitually eating mud pre-earthquake; that was a response to high food prices a couple of years ago - Haiti’s poor resort to eating mud as prices rise.

The mud has long been prized by pregnant women and children here as an antacid and source of calcium. But in places like Cite Soleil, the oceanside slum where Charlene shares a two-room house with her baby, five siblings and two unemployed parents, cookies made of dirt, salt and vegetable shortening have become a regular meal.

"When my mother does not cook anything, I have to eat them three times a day," Dumas said. Her baby, named Woodson, lay still across her lap, looking even thinner than the 6 pounds, 3 ounces he weighed at birth.

Though she likes their buttery, salty taste, Charlene said the cookies also give her stomach pains. "When I nurse, the baby sometimes seems colicky too," she said.

[2 As and a B]

(I wonder what England would be like if a third of the population became homeless this afternoon and 2% died.)

I was going to draw a comparison between London and Port-au-Prance but it wouldn't be fair because there are major urban centres outside London, infrastructure and resources in the way of equipment, fuel, transport, hospitals, electricity in the rest of the UK. A fairer comparison might be between Port-au-Prance and London, Birmingham, Manchester, Cardiff, Edinburgh and Glasgow being flattened in 3 minutes. How long would it be then before gang and inter-racial violence broke out amongst the thirsty, hungry survivors?

[contadino]

Here's a comment from another forum

Despite living in Italy, a supossedly modern European country with a great deal of experience in earthquakes, the standard here is massive concrete reinforced beams all around - it's the law! Apparently, post L'Aquila, they are now considering the possiblity of some new craze of buildings that are resistant to earthquakes: houses made from wood! It will be a few years before authority is granted to use such techniques and then probably a generation before it is widely accepted by the populous.

My Itilain friend who has a wood importing business has failed for years to get planning permission for a wooden house. AND we've got loads of oak right here!

If Italy can't be educated what chance Haiti?

Unsurprisingly, I have no sympathy for the commenter. Buy a cheap house in an earthquake zone, then moan about building regulations in place to protect you..? Does he think that those regulations are there for a laugh? No, they're based on advice from structural engineers and conservation architects, of which Italy has a vast number with a huge amount of experience.

Wood is more likely frowned upon because Italy as a whole is very badly deforested, and the government is tasked with incentivising massive reforestation programmes, rather than using the wood. 97ish% of wood used for building in Italy is imported from Albania/Slovenia, with an associated high cost.

It's all too easy to say that people are uneducated without a full understanding of the reasons.

[Mark]

US begins airdrops of food and water into Haiti:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/8466973.stm

14,000 ready-to-eat meals ?
15,000 litres of water ?
Sounds like a very small drop in the ocean to me.

I'm sure their response is quicker when one of their drones spies a Taliban leader....

[biffvernon]

14,000 ready-to-eat meals ?
15,000 litres of water ?

I expect the Americans think that since Jesus fed 5000 with five loaves, feeding 10 million with 14000 ready-to-eat meals is about the right ratio.

[Aurora]

Vortex, I have a small request.

I should be most grateful if you would change the title of this thread from '3M dead in Haiti???' to 'Haiti Earthquake Disaster'.

Thanks.