Recent Earthquakes Reinforce Value of Seismic Codes
Is it just me, or has their been an inordinate number of earthquakes lately? A 7.0 in Haiti on January 12, the 8.8 monster in Chile on February 27, the what-would-normally-be-considered large 5.5 in Turkey on March 8, and then another 7.0 rocker in Chile today. The devastation and despair these have caused have been well-documented and I don’t want to go into detail about that here. (Though I would be remiss not to once again mention the American Logistics Aid Network, of which MHEDA is a major contributor. Click the link above to learn more.)
I’m thinking about it more in terms of building codes. A colleague of mine mentioned earlier today how it’s times like these when those annoying building codes that sometimes seem so frivolous don’t seem so bad after all. Hearing the stories of crumbling, cheaply made buildings in some of these places makes you glad, at least for the short-term, that we have codes and requirements in place.
Now, I don’t know what sort of building codes, if any, are in place in Chile, Haiti and Turkey. Maybe the damage would have been the same — granted, an 8.8-magnitude quake would likely do pretty severe damage even to a strong, secure building. But it does make one realize that those codes are there for a reason. Up here in usually-earthquake-free upstate New York , here’s hoping that I don’t need to ever find out.
For more info on building codes in material handling, read this archived article in The MHEDA Journal Online.
Tags: disaster relief, material handling, rack, storage & handling
March 11th, 2010 at 5:11 pm
Chile has some of the strictest building codes in the world.
March 12th, 2010 at 4:28 pm
Thanks, Lara. That may explain why the casualty count there was so much less than in Haiti, despite the quake being several times stronger.
March 16th, 2010 at 2:51 pm
Another earthquake today, thankfully minor. California got a 4.4 shaker this morning. What is going on out there?!
March 31st, 2010 at 9:04 am
[...] few weeks ago, I posted a blog about the proliferation of major earthquakes and how the damage they cause is related to building codes. A recent Op-Ed piece in The New York [...]
April 5th, 2010 at 12:44 pm
[...] goes to the point I was trying to make in this blog post a couple of weeks ago. Another earthquake…what is going on out [...]