Page 117 - Building Codes News Today

The one underneath haiti. why did this one cause such less damage than the one in haiti did? >> there are really two reasons. one is the earthquake itself and one is the state of the infrastructure. this was a huge earthquake, one of the top five or six in the last century. it broke from the epicenter hundreds of miles along the coast of chile. this map shows the strongly shaken areas where the shaking was strong enough to damage structures and the weaker shaking in the of softer colors here. on...

Much better prepared for an earthquake, right? >> it is. and funny you should mention haiti, of course, that situation is upper most in peoples minds looking for the comparisons here. a rescue crew, a five-fighter rescue crew working on this building here. a 15-story building that simply fell over on its side. that rescue crew had only recently returned from haiti. now, what the head of the firefighters there told me was that chile has a longer culture, longer tradition of preparing for earthqua...

In chile and a weak government in haiti. you have a lot of disparities between the two. you have good emergency management in chile, and they had a major quake in the 60s, i believe. and they learned from their mistakes. so they had improved construction codes. and if you look at that 13-story building that collapsed, it collapsed 90 degrees onto its side and is in relatively in good shape. it stayed intact. they used good construction, good rebar, good concrete. >> what is your concept of ameri...

Earthquake. >> humongous, right. >> the difference between chile and, for instance, haiti, chile had better building codes and they were better prepared. >> thats right. and also, the chile earthquake took place 20 miles below ground while the haitian earthquake took place eight miles below ground. >> the closer to the surface, the worst for the people. >> more destruction. thats why the tsunami was not as bad as we thought because the earthquake was so deep below the surface. >> we just saw thi...

Troops to try to maintain order. over the weekend, some of the looters were hit with water cannons as well as tear gas and that in turn created yet another problem. nearby rescuers breathed in some of that tear gas as they were trying to dig out dozens and dozens of people believed to be trapped under a 15 story building thats collapse. one of many buildings in that city that crumbled because of this 8.8 quake. whats significant about this particular building is its new construction. it was open...

Around the world could have an impact off the united states, could trigger or bring us to the big one. having said that, how ready is the united states for that magnitude sized quake off of the coast? >> were really seeing an amazing story developing here. here was an earthquake that was 500 times more energy release than the earthquake in haiti. were seeing all the destruction, were not seeing anywhere near the kind of death toll. and what that tells us is the importance of building codes. the ...

Aid system here in california and the best fire, law enforcement, volunteers to support our efforts. unfortunately we regularly go through earthquakes, just before haitis earthquake on tuesday, on saturday, we had a 6.5 earthquake up in eureka. it gives us a test and opportunity to test our systems and make sure that were getting better. with the 8.8 earthquake in chile, obviously working closely with the pacific and west coast and alaska tsunami warning center, early saturday morning we were al...

Certainly, low. are you surprised by this? or is this just great preparation? >> well, it is not all preparation. mother nature has a part in this, too. haiti in the earthquake was very shallow to the one compared in chile. five miles versus 22 miles. and you are much closer to port-au-prince, the capital, than you were to santiago, so those two combinations make damage worse for haiti. >> no doubt about that. and certainly, the building codes in haiti pretty much nonexistent, but in chile, a li...

How many people need help? >> well, fortunately, since we have had a history of earthquakes, the construction code in chile is strict and demanding. so, i think that an 8.8 quake in another country without the building codes that we have could have meant thousands upon thousands of lives lost. that has not been the case, even though there are some high-rises that have fallen in around the city of concepcion, and there are people trapped. this is not in any shape or form anything similar to the t...

But they were safe as well. and i agree with you about building codes. that friend that i spoke to said that chile has some of the best building codes in the world. and i think that they really helped this time around. >> was it a fact that the government and the officials, including the president, were on the air or on the internet almost immediately reassuring the chilean people that all would be well. and they would help them find the missing or the injured. >> obviously the president has onl...