Report On Haiti Devastation Cites Poor Building Practices.

Report on Haiti Devastation Cites Poor Building Practices.

The San Jose Mercury News (1/27, Tribune) reports, "Haiti's construction industry is to blame for hundreds of thousands of deaths in a tragedy that will repeat itself unless there are changes to building practices there," according to Eduardo Fierro, president of BFP Engineers. "In one of the first technical reports on this month's earthquake," Fierro yesterday "presented his preliminary findings" at the Pacific Engineering Earthquake Research Center at UC Berkeley "following a week of reconnaissance in Haiti that started just two days after" the earthquake. Fierro said, "This was not an earthquake disaster -- it was a disaster caused by the construction industry in Haiti who didn't know anything about building codes." Fierro added that "an equal amount" of blame "is shared by a government which offers no building code and no enforcement of building design."

        The San Francisco Chronicle (1/27, Perlman) reports, "Fierro found that the cement used as building material was shoddy even in the Presidential Palace, and that the steel reinforcing rods...inside every fallen column 'were no bigger around than my little finger.'" Fierro added that "the columns themselves in every building...were far too slender to hold the weight of the beams above, and walls were often made of hollow cinder blocks with no rebar at all." He said, "The beams that the columns were supposed to hold up were also unreinforced, and the joints between them simply tore apart."

        Engineers Seek To Offer Lasting Help To Haiti. KTVI-TV St. Louis, MO (1/26, Bruce) reported on the different ways engineers in the US are offering aid to Haiti. "Structural engineers are already on the ground evaluating the safety of buildings still standing," and in the near future "more earthquake experts are expected to travel there to study the impact of the quake on masonry buildings and to give the government advice on rebuilding." In the meantime, "Some eighty engineers and earthquake experts" met at a recent seminar "to plan future research needs." Julio Ramirez, a civil engineering professor at Purdue said, one of the things we can learn is how certain retrofit techniques or techniques to upgrade the construction work for that type of environment." Ramirez "expects research in the aftermath of the Haitain quake will give Americans new knowledge with regards to say masonry construction that could be used anywhere in the world."