Preparing for disasters saves more lives than emergency aid, says Brian Tucker, earthquake scientist and president of NGO Geohazards International. That is why he wants to spend one tenth of all aid for Haiti on protecting against the next catastrophe.
 | Brian Tucker, President, Geohazards International"The way to reduce loss of life is preparing for the consequences of earthquakes before they occur rather than sending relief afterwards" |
You have said that no natural disaster is an Act of God. What do you mean?
After the October 2005 earthquake in northern Pakistan, the former Pakistani President Musharraf said it was an “Act of God” and there was no way of preparing for it. That’s very convenient for a politician because it means he can duck responsibility.
Such statements feed the fatalism that pretends we have no idea that Karachi, for example, is on a huge geological fault. If people believe they can’t predict earthquakes then they won’t prepare for them.
Yet, science knows where earthquakes occur, why they occur, and how buildings collapse. With that knowledge we can avoid or minimize the damage. The way to reduce loss of life is preparing for the consequences of earthquakes before they occur rather than sending relief afterwards.
Can science tell us when earthquakes will occur?
Only in very specialized situations. I grew up in the era of great excitement about earthquake prediction, but it is not the answer and we should rather focus on the general ‘return periods’ of earthquakes.
Often local officials don’t understand that because they haven’t had a large earthquake in a long time they are all the more likely to suffer one. It is basic earth science.
We try to make people aware that they face a risk—even if an earthquake has not occurred in 200 years—and that they can do something about it.
Where are the most vulnerable places?
Something like 85 percent of deaths occur in an arc of vulnerability from Rome through Central Asia to the Philippines and Indonesia which includes major developing world cities like Istanbul, Tehran, Karachi, and Jakarta.
Then there is the western coast of the Americas, from California to Mexico City, Guatemala City, and down towards Lima, Peru.
In the next 20 years the world’s population will grow by about 2 billion people and all the growth will occur in cities in the developing world. That results in more people in shoddily built buildings than ever before. That is why the risk of more disasters like Haiti is increasing.
You propose that ten percent of all aid to Haiti be reserved for preparing for future earthquakes. How would you spend that money?
In all probability the next earthquake in Haiti will be in a different spot so I would focus on the bigger cities that lie on well-recognized faults. We should first start by retrofitting and strengthening schools and hospitals.
I would also launch a public awareness program to combat the fatalism we see. I would start improving the curricula in schools and colleges to boost earth sciences and engineering.
I would also ask all international organizations in Haiti—the UN, the World Bank, the Red Cross, foreign embassies—to rebuild their structures to be earthquake resistant.
And I would require that they involve the local architects, masons, and builders so that the results are not just safer buildings but a trained local workforce. This would create an economic incentive for the Haitian community to embrace earthquake-resistant design and construction.
If we had 30 years to prepare for the next Port-au-Prince earthquake I think we could save 100,000 lives.
How do you make buildings earthquake resistant?
A building is like a box, and if you tie the walls and roof of the box together so that they all move as one unit it is much stronger than if the walls and the roof can move independently. If they move independently, you have walls falling into the building or walls falling out and the roof falling onto people.
There are various inexpensive ways to tie the roof and walls together such as metal straps going around the house, or even chicken wire applied to the outside of the walls to stop them from collapsing.
A very good testimony to good engineering and public policy is the fact that no child in a California school has died during an earthquake since 1933.
In many places, after the earthquake comes an even more devastating tsunami. How can people prepare for that?
A classic low-tech example is in the Mentawai islands off Sumatra where local legends and nursery rhymes warn people that when they see the sea recede and fish flopping on the beach they should head for the hills. Relatively few people there were killed by the 2004 tsunami.
In Japan, they have structures to evacuate vertically instead of horizontally, typically sophisticated steel and concrete structures like raised parking garages.
But those solutions just don’t exist in places like Padang in West Sumatra, where there is a roughly 50-50 chance that in the next 30 years the city of one million will be hit by a 5 to 10-meter high tsunami. They will have about 20 minutes before this wave arrives.
There is no way to evacuate so many people in 20 minutes so we are proposing raised earth parks—10 meters high or higher. We think these parks could save 50 to 100 thousand people, and we are applying to Swiss RE insurance for support. The insurance and reinsurance industries should have an interest in promoting these kinds of risk reductions.
Ultimately, however, it is up to public officials in vulnerable countries to spend money preparing for these natural disasters.
editor: James Tulloch
publishing date: March 5, 2010
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