Poor construction led to Haiti devastation

14 Jan 2010, 9:18 am   -   Source: AFP
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People look at the remains of a six-story communications building in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. (Getty Images)

People look at the remains of a six-story communications building in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. (Getty Images)

US engineers have blamed lax building standards for the devastation in Haiti, where a powerful earthquake brought buildings crumbling to the ground, trapping thousands beneath rubble.

US engineers have blamed lax building standards for the devastation in Haiti, where a powerful earthquake brought buildings crumbling to the ground, trapping thousands beneath rubble.

"The quality of construction in Haiti, even in buildings that are supposedly engineered construction, is not good at all," said Farzad Naeim, president of the board of directors of the Earthquake Engineering Research Institute (EERI).

"There's no question that the lack of quality control and not using engineering knowledge that is widely available had something to do with the massive devastation we're seeing," said Naeim, who edited the Seismic Design Handbook and is vice president of a structural engineering firm in California.

From photographs he has seen of the devastation in Haiti, Naeim said many of the larger buildings were built using nonductile concrete - described in a report presented at the World Conference on Earthquake Engineering in Beijing in 2008 as "arguably... the greatest seismic life safety hazard in many urban centers worldwide because of the collapse potential."

Construction codes in the United States today require that buildings have ductility - "a property that allows them to distort like a coat hanger without breaking" - according to EERI, but many buildings were built with nonductile concrete, including in the United States, up to the mid-1970s.

Many of the buildings that collapsed in Haiti "have been there for ages and generally older buildings are not up to the task.

And the money is not there to bring them up to the task." Ron Hamburger of the National Council of Structural Engineers Associations said the wreckage in Port-au-Prince was worsened by the fact that the powerful quake had its epicentre just a few miles outside the Haitian capital.

"A magnitude seven earthquake located 10 miles from the city is a very, very serious event," Hamburger said. "Surviving an earthquake like that takes very rigorous design rules and building code and enforcement that things are actually constructed in accordance with the code.

"I have heard that Haiti does not have strict building code enforcement, and so it's likely even the things that people believed to be reinforced were not constructed or designed to an adequate standard," he said.

Haitian Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive said more than 100,000 people were feared dead in his country after Tuesday's 7.0-magnitude quake.

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Your Comments

ARCHITECT

THOMAS MOORE - from SANTA BARBARA, CA, 2 years ago

How can material and know-how be made available on a massive scale? The best seismic material is lightweight with tensile strength such as wood, paper or foam, but Haiti has no forests left and lightweight construction is vulnerable to hurricanes....hum

beyond construction building

nathalie Jean Baptiste - from mosman, 2 years ago

When a earthquake of the magnitude of 7+ scale strikes on an overcrowded city like Port-Au-Prince, more factors than poor building materials and poor construction methods need to be taken into account. Mexico's earthquake in 1985 had a similar effect in Mexico City's downtown area. The results were an improved construction regulation standard. Haitians are resilient and creative people. They need our help and knowledge to rebuild their current urban environment. Let's be more proactive.

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