When the lessons are cultural or economic, they are harder to learn or apply. When the lessons are scientific, they can be codified and shared. Once an immediate crisis has passed and investigations have been completed, then comes the most challenging phase: deciding what to do next. Resulting questions have to do with building standards and where (and how well) they are applied, and economics (decisions about how much safety is worth). The causes of devastation here are clearly beyond the scientific cultural and economic factors play significant roles, as do settlement and development patterns. These studies may confirm existing knowledge (e.g., the Kobe Report's confirmation that newer structures survived because of their more sophisticated designs), may point to a need for new knowledge or regulation (as in the 1923 Tokyo quake, which led to Japan's first building code), or may uncover flaws in applying existing knowledge, either because that knowledge is not sufficiently detailed or because it has been inexpertly applied (as turned out to be the case with earthquakes in Mexico City in 1985 and Turkey in 1999). Secondary challenges emerge as investigators study which structures failed and which survived, in an effort to learn lessons for future construction. Is the community able to cope (on its own or with outside assistance) when communication, rescue, and medical systems have been damaged or destroyed? Tornadoes (including the 148 that formed the Super Outbreak of 1974, killing 315) and hurricanes (such as Camille of 1969, which killed 200 and caused billions of dollars in damage) can cause massive devastation as well.Īlthough the basic cause of the building collapses in these disasters is structural failure (as is true in any collapse), such widespread collapses pose the immediate challenge of disaster response in the face of damaged (or even nonexistent) infrastructure. The 1923 earthquake near Tokyo, Japan, measured 8.3 on the Richter scale and left 100,000 dead the 1995 Kobe, Japan, earthquake, rated 7.2, was the costliest ever, causing an estimated US$150 billion in damage and destroying nearly 100,000 structures. These two kinds of explanations often have different relative weights in examinations of natural, inadvertent, and intentional destructions.īuilding destructions caused by natural disasters are the most deadly and devastating kind. Such forces are more difficult to analyze and impossible to quantify, but they are as much a part of building success and failure as are the physical laws that allow them to stand or fall.
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Here, the forces are those of the designers and others involved in determining whether and how to erect (or destroy) a structure. Matthys Levy and Mario Salvadori (2002), for instance, declare that collapses are always due to structural failure, though this failure may come about in a variety of ways (and, though they do not explicitly say so, may or may not be accidental).Ī second type of explanation focuses on what might be termed social-rather than physical-dynamics. The lessons drawn from such analyses will be, necessarily, structural or mechanical in nature. The first is focused on the mechanics or physics of the destruction it asks what forces were acting on (and being produced by) what parts of the structure and in what fashion. Two types of explanation exist for collapses. Each type raises different, if related, ethical questions.
Though they happen for a variety of reasons, collapses can be clustered into three groups: those resulting from natural disasters (earthquakes, mudslides, tornadoes, and the like) inadvertent collapses (because of flaws in design, use, and/or maintenance) and intentional destruction (including both planned demolition and malevolent attacks).
Yet occasionally a building does collapse, bringing with it questions about the science, technology, and ethics of structures. Engineers and architects design buildings to stand, and the vast majority of them do so without major incident.
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