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