Page 120 - Building Codes News Today

Youre saying 500 times more powerf powerful? >> stronger, more shaking. other things that factor into the damage. one of the things being the building codes, better in chile, but the pictures were seeing now getting into the cnn newsroom are striking, none the less. cnns josh levs has been watching that online. >> powerful image. i want this camera to push way, way, way into the picture behind me. the associated press has sent along some of the first photos from this quake. what youre looking at...

Concepcion, and the phone service -- theyre very dependent on cell phones like we are anyway, but no phone service as of this time. we have very good friends that we had during the time we lived in concepcion. we came to the united states about the same time we came back in 2001. and they live in dayton. weve been in contact with them, and theyre the same. theyre not able to get any information about the friends and relatives in concepcion. theyre quite frantic, actually, to find out the conditi...

Theyre used to earthquakes, just not ones like this. >> this is a big one. thanks a lot, jacqui jeras. well check back you throughout the evening. lets go ralitsa vassileva at the chile desk. you can get a handle over all that is being said from the president of the country on down. >> fred, were still waiting to hear from the president of the country michelle bachelet but we just heard from the president-elect of the country. the country is in a transition. in two weeks it will have a new presi...

Shallow. and the other aspect of this is whats the make-up of the soil? one of the reasons that western part of port-au-prince saw so much damage is because its kind of a sandy soil that is not quite as bedrock solid as places to the east. so this is all going to shake out here as we go through time. >> and theres a difference between power and size. and when it comes to the size of this quake, it was larger than the one that struck haiti. >> certainly larger, but i think its maybe ten times "la...

We have had some trouble with hospitals. but people are being rescued from somewhere, some buildings. but theyre working hard. so we can do it better. >> no doubt about that. i can hear the tenseness in your voice. i know you have a long road ahead in recovering from this quake. and i thank you for much for sharing your views with us. anita herrera live for us from the hotel in chile. sounds to me as shes describing because of the building codes and because its away from the epicenter, were not ...

Magnitude for earthquakes. so this is crazy strong. in fact, coming up, when i see you again, fredricka, ill show you a comparison between this earthquake and haiti and why we have had less damage with this one. a lot of that has to do with the building codes. >> and the population. >> and the population, exactly. this happened three miles offshore in an unpopulated area. santiago is way up here compared to where the big quake was. and so all of those things made this a little lesser than it cou...

The airport in santiago, the capital, for the next 72 hours. as you can imagine, this is going to affect air traffic in south america for the next three days. so still a very volatile situation in chile. and were keeping a look at -- were getting video feeds from chile right now and well give you the latest information in the next hour. back to you. >> im curious. maybe you can share insight with our viewers about the country itself. how well equipped is it for a situation like this? obviously h...

A lot of the buildings did not fair so well. but we should expect to see a much lower death toll thankfully than what we saw in haiti because this is such a country that is so much more developed than haiti. its a much wealthier country than haiti and their building codes are much more strong than what we saw in haiti. so thats something that well be watching for in the days and weeks ahead as we see exactly what the final numbers will be. but the numbers have been jumping throughout the day. no...

>> well, its both. its not high industry. conception has actually -- its a very residential city. the second largest in the country. so a lot of people who live in the south and work in different areas live there and as well, its also the city that has the highest rates of poverty in the country. so i think that a lot of the damage that we see is going to be right there because in areas that have perhaps not so sturdy construction or construction that hasnt gone by the very strict building codes...

The infrastructure makes such a difference. building codes, if your building is reinforced with rebar, with roofs that can withstand that kind of a shaking, that makes such a difference. unfortunately, in haiti they didnt have any of that. in chile now, these numbers are going to be fluid for a while because theyre not, as you said, even been able to get into all the buildings and to search for people. maybe to still get into towns that might be cut off by bridges that have been knocked down or ...