5.14.2008

China: Lax building codes contributed to disaster

An Unnecessary Tragedy

Excerpt:

China's massive earthquake wasn't without precedent. In 1993, a magnitude 7.5 tremor killed about 9,000 people in the northwestern Sichuan Basin. Monday's event happened when, according to the United States Geological Survey, the Earth's crust underlying the high Tibetan Plateau edged west, rubbing up against the crust underlying the Sichuan Basin and southeastern China. It was a shallow event, meaning the collision happened only a few miles below the Earth's surface -- intensifying the destruction. Its tremors were felt even 2,000 kilometers away, in Bangkok.

The Chinese government was aware of this threat and took measures to protect against it. In 2006, Chinese regulators updated the country's building codes and made major changes in regard to new buildings' required "earthquake loads," or the ability of a structure to withstand shaking. China's code is now on par with similar codes in seismically active areas of the world. China has become one of the most active users of modern approaches of structural control and health monitoring of civil infrastructure structures. Virtually all major new civil structures, such as long bridges and athletic stadiums, are heavily instrumented with sensors that can detect and assess rapid changes in the building's condition. Innovation is booming.

As in other countries, however, China's problem is that there are many older structures that do not meet the stricter new codes, or don't maintain it once the building is constructed. From initial reports, the geographical distribution of destruction suggests that near the center of the industrial city of Chengdu, where the damage has been limited, building codes had been enforced. But in the rural areas -- which were hit hardest -- these codes weren't followed. This pattern, where the surrounding, poorer areas of large cities suffer the most casualties, is often observed in the aftermath of natural disasters in developing nations. The types of catastrophic collapses seen in the first news reels from China this week are reminiscent of similar scenes most recently from Bam in Iran in 2003 and Turkey in 1999.

Those earthquakes were of a smaller magnitude but had a similar impact in terms of deaths. And many of those deaths were entirely unnecessary. There is no excuse for the collapse of schools or other public buildings such as hospitals, whether they were built recently or decades ago. If any local authority wanted to use public buildings that did not meet current codes, Beijing could have required local governments to retroactively strengthen those structures. In this regard, the Chinese government can do much better.


Comment: Lindsay T. from 4th Baptist has friends in Dujiangyan

4 comments:

  1. JP, this is a tragedy and not something to joke about, in the least. The pictures from China are heart-wrenching.

    So I'm not trying to be witty or funny, but I can't figure out any other place to put this. The only "clever" thing I'll say is that it seems as if these buildings didn't have much intelligent design.....Segue to another topic.......Am I misunderstanding something? I seem to be. Or am I not an intelligent reader? There's another board (which shall remain nameless :) )where there seems to be almost a putdown of ID and where we want to be cool and hip and reject traditional literal creationism and embrace theistic evolution. Am I just misunderstanding them and not a very bright guy and can't read very well? Is it the latest hip thing in Christianity to try to be cool and embrace Darwin and God at the same time by being a theistic evolutionist? Polls over there don't seem rate ID as important, and people actually want to criticize good movies like "Expelled." I don't get it.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I had lunch with a Chinese colleague yesterday and this subject came up. Given the magnitude of the quake, I was reluctant to blame anything in the building methods.

    He wasn't.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Who was joking, anon?

    One possible culprit; the buildings that failed would have been built on the old Soviet model of large slabs of concrete with minimal rebar more or less stacked on each other.

    If you wonder why it takes Chinese families (and Russians) a lot more energy to heat a certain space than it does Americans, read that first part again.

    But to your point, yes, there is not a lot of intelligent design and engineering involved in Soviet era apartment buildings and factories. The point was to get living space there, not necessarily to make it liveable or reliable.

    You could say it "evolved."

    ReplyDelete
  4. BB, I was actually referring to ID in the sense in which it is usually used: the origin of life.

    I thought people might think I was joking because I was talking about a completely different topic and going off course of the subject heading. There was another board I used to be on but they kicked me off. Hmmm, maybe I believed too much in literal creation and wasn't enough of an evolutionist for them. I was questioning where and when did this come up in Christianity. It used to be that people either believed in intelligent design or they were a Darwinist. It would look like right now all the cool people try to be both: A Christian Darwinist.

    Ok, I'm sorry.........I should stop changing subjects and get back on topic. (For the 3 of us who read this board :) )

    ReplyDelete

Any anonymous comments with links will be rejected. Please do not comment off-topic