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Peter Haas

The document summarizes why so many lives were lost in the 2010 Haiti earthquake compared to a similar earthquake in Chile a month later. It argues that the Haiti earthquake was not just a natural disaster but a "disaster of engineering" because buildings were not constructed to withstand seismic activity. Key failures included unsecured walls, slabs, and columns as well as low-quality materials. In contrast, Chile has seismic standards and construction practices that tie all building components together, leading to far fewer casualties from an even more powerful quake. The document concludes there is now an opportunity to teach masons safer construction techniques to build more earthquake-resistant housing in Haiti.

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Francisca Walz
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103 views1 page

Peter Haas

The document summarizes why so many lives were lost in the 2010 Haiti earthquake compared to a similar earthquake in Chile a month later. It argues that the Haiti earthquake was not just a natural disaster but a "disaster of engineering" because buildings were not constructed to withstand seismic activity. Key failures included unsecured walls, slabs, and columns as well as low-quality materials. In contrast, Chile has seismic standards and construction practices that tie all building components together, leading to far fewer casualties from an even more powerful quake. The document concludes there is now an opportunity to teach masons safer construction techniques to build more earthquake-resistant housing in Haiti.

Uploaded by

Francisca Walz
Copyright
© Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as DOC, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Peter Haas: Haiti's disaster of engineering

He learned about the Haiti earthquake by Skype because his wife sent
him a message. In Haiti there was building collapse. We have all
heard about the tremendous human loss in the earthquake in Haiti,
but we haven't heard enough about why all those lives were lost.
After all, it was the buildings, not the earthquake, that killed 220,000
people, that injured 330,000, that displaced 1.3 million people, that
cut off food and water and supplies for an entire nation. This is the
largest metropolitan-area disaster in decades. And it was not only a
natural disaster; it was a disaster of engineering. The failure points
were the same: walls and slabs not tied properly into columns
,cantilevered structures, or structures that were asymmetric, that
shook violently and came down, poor building materials, not enough
concrete, not enough compression in the blocks, rebar that was
smooth, rebar that was exposed to the weather and had rusted away.
Now there's a solution to all these problems. And people know how to
build properly. The proof of this came in Chile, almost a month later,
when 8.8 magnitude earthquake hit Chile. 500 times the power, yet
only under a thousand casualties. Adjusted for population density,
that is less than one percent of the impact of the Haitian quake. What
was the difference between Chile and Haiti? Seismic standards and
confined masonry, where the building acts as a whole -- walls and
columns and roofs and slabs tied together to support each other,
instead of breaking off into separate members and failing.
To make sure these buildings are safe, it's not going to take
policy, it's going to take reaching out to the masons on the ground
and helping them learn the proper techniques. Now there are many
groups doing this. There is the possibility to reach out to 30,000,
40,000 masons across the country and create a movement of proper
building.
For all the disaster, there is an opportunity here to build
better houses for the next generation, so that when the next
earthquake hits, it is a disaster, but not a tragedy.

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