Earthquakes Dont Kill People;

Buildings Kill People.

Around three-quarters of all deaths in earthquakes are due to building
collapse
20/06/2013

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"Earthquakes don't kill

people, collapsed buildings
do"
COPENHAGEN Natural disasters cost the world $100
billion a year, the equivalent of Africas entire yearly
infrastructure budget, said a top engineer during her
lecture at UNOPS headquarters last week. While Ms da Silva said
earthquakes caused 60 percent of disaster-related deaths, -

- See more at: https://www.unops.org/english/News/Pages/Earthquakes-dont-kill-people-collapsedbuildings-do.aspx#sthash.J5HRpS2j.dpuf

WHEN THE SHAKING

from the Himalayan earthquake reached Kathmandu just

before noon on April 25, the Nepalese capital was filled with buildingshastily
constructed, poorly builtthat were filled with people.
Saturdays earthquake may have caught Nepal by off guard, but that doesnt
mean it came as a surprise. You have a massive plate boundary system going
under the country of Nepal, says Janise Rodgers, a structural engineer with
Geohazards International, a Palo Alto nonprofit that helps developing
countries earthquake-proof their infrastructure. Experts like Rodgers expected
the quake because Nepal sits astride a massive continental subduction zone.
And the resulting devastation came as no surprise, either, because Kathmandu
is filled with buildings not made to stand up to a quake. Seeing modern,
vulnerable construction go up without engineering input, building codes, or
thought to earthquake design made a lot of people very worried, Rodgers

says. The details of earthquake mitigation vary from building to building, but
the general principles are:
1. Build on bedrock (not sloppy sediment).
2. Tie buildings together so they wont be easily knocked over.
3. Use steel, or something similarly strong, to reinforce concrete buildings.
Proximity to a fault line puts cities in danger of earthquakes. Other accidents
of geography can exacerbate a trembler 1, but you can predict a citys real risk
using a much simpler metric: net worth. In Nepal, you have a rapidly growing
population that is very poor, and has basic shelter that is unsafe rather than
shelter that is earthquake safe that they cant afford, says Simon Klemperer,
a seismologist at Stanford University.
The scary part? Kathmandu isnt unique. Its impossible to predict an
earthquake with reliability, of course, but when I asked seismologists what
places they worried about the most, these three were among the most
compelling examples of places at the intersection of geology and economics.

Mexico City, Mexico

Even though the Mexican capital is hundreds of miles from any fault lines, it is
one of the most seismically threatened cities on the globe. If a quake strikes
the coast, people living above the dense bedrock between the Pacific and the
capital might only feel a slight tremble. But the capital sits atop an infilled
lake, which traps and amplifies seismic waves. And before 1957, the city did
not require buildings to be earthquake compliant. Since then, semi-regular
tremblers have knocked down a lot of dangerous dwellings (some of which
were rebuilt with quake reinforcement), but in the same period the citys
perimeter has expanded with shantytowns.

On the plus side, Mexico City has a pretty nice early warning system. It 2012,
when a 7.4 quake hit the coast 200 miles away, the alarm gave many
Capitalinos precious seconds to find their way to safety.

Istanbul, Turkey
Like Kathmandu and Mexico City, this ancient city connecting Europe and
Asia is filled with poor people living in poorly built structures. Unlike those
other places, Istanbul is right on top of a dangerous fault zone. The North
Anatolian fault is a similar typestrike-slipto Californias San Andreas
fault, says Rodgers. And as with its North American twin, experts have been
predicting a minimum 7.0 magnitude quake on the North Anatolian for years.
But Istanbul does not have anything near Californias stringent earthquake
codes. The last quake to hit the citya 7.4 magnitudekilled more than
17,000 people. In the Golden State, the Loma Prieta quakeof comparable
strengthshook up the Bay Area, but only killed 63.

New Madrid, USA

On the surface, the middle parts of America do not seem like candidates for
seismic disaster. But 200 years ago a small town in southeastern Missouri was
the epicenter of several huge earthquakes, some of which reached up to 8.0
magnitude. The strongest of these quakes altered the course of the
Mississippi River. But because the region has been so quiet in the past century
or so, building codes were never brought up to snuff. In 2008, FEMA issued a
warning that a modern earthquake of the same magnitude (the odds are

around 7 to 10 percent in the next 50 years) would cause, the highest

economic losses due to a natural disaster in the United States.
Bringing buildings up to codeat home or abroadis costly, but economics is
just the language we use to measure the true cost of disaster. When youre
talking about earthquake mitigation, youre talking about lives youre saving,
says Rodgers. Thats where the real value is: Youre protecting lives. In other
words, we should start picking up buildings before they fall down.
1. Kathmandu was built in a huge, bowl-like basin atop young, sedimentary
rocks. When the quake struck, the basin focused the seismic waves onto the
city, which propagated through the soft sediments at amplified levels.

California
Ways to rebuild safely and improve resilience are already known, and indeed
have been demonstrated: in Concepcion, Chile, the 2010 earthquake was the
sixth largest on record, but fatalities remained under 1,000, in large part due
to effective implementation of building regulations. And disasters constantly
provide new lessons on how to improve resilience, not just of the built
environment, but of social and community structures, too.

FACT: Earthquakes are sudden rolling or shaking events

caused by movement under the Earths surface.
An earthquake is the ground shaking caused by a sudden slip on a fault. Stresses in the earth's outer
layer push the sides of the fault together. Stress builds up and the rocks slip suddenly, releasing energy
in waves that travel through the earth's crust and cause the shaking that we feel during an earthquake.

Faults are caused by the tectonic plates grinding and scraping against each other as they continuously
and slowly move. In California, for example, there are two plates - the Pacific Plate (which extends from
western California to Japan, including much of the Pacific Ocean floor) and the North American Plate
(which is most of the North American continent and parts of the Atlantic Ocean). The Pacific Plate
moves northwestward past the North American Plate along the San Andreas Fault at a rate of about
two inches per year.
Parts of the San Andreas Fault system adapt to this movement by constant "creep" resulting in many
tiny shocks and a few moderate earth tremors. In other parts, strain can build up for hundreds of years,
producing great earthquakes when it finally releases. Large and small earthquakes can also occur on
faults not previously recognized; recent earthquakes in Alabama and Virginia are good examples.
Alaska registers the most earthquakes in a given year, with California placing second, until 2014 when
a sudden increase in seismicity in Oklahoma pushed it well past California as the second most active in
terms of magnitude (M) 3.0 and greater earthquakes. In 2014 there were 585 M3 and greater
earthquakes in Oklahoma and about 200 in California. As of April 2015 Oklahoma (260 events) is still
well ahead of California (29 events).
California, however, has the most damaging earthquakes, including a M6.0 earthquake near Napa in
August 2014, because of its greater population and extensive infrastructure. Most of Alaskas large
earthquakes occur in remote locations such as along the Aleutian Island chain. Florida and North
Dakota have the fewest earthquakes each year.