Worse than the above is the fact that many communities across the United States don't have building codes in place, since they are locally mandated.
Which brings me to this article: "New Report Charts Path Toward Superior Earthquake Recovery."
Quoting from the article, "A committee of experts, formed by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) under the direction of Congress, has urged officials at all levels of government to support research and policies that could help get the buildings and services society depends on up and running quickly after an earthquake. In a report delivered to Congress, the committee outlines seven recommendations that, if acted upon, may greatly improve the resilience of communities across the nation. “As structural engineers we feel confident that the current building codes can deliver life safety design objectives. Now, it's time to go beyond that and think about recovery of function,” said Siamak Sattar, a NIST structural engineer and co-author of the report."
All of the above is good and I personally appreciate the work that was done — I'm just not very hopeful. I think I'm getting more pessimistic in my older years since I've seen such reports and recommendations going in a pile of other such reports that never get implemented.
With all that said, here are the seven recommendations from the Executive Summary:
"Recommendation 1: Develop a Framework for Post-Earthquake Reoccupancy and Functional Recovery Objectives. A framework for reoccupancy and functional recovery is needed to provide a national consensus on policies and technical criteria necessary to define what services must be in place and the design requirements needed for a building or lifeline infrastructure system to be occupiable or functionally recoverable within a specified timeframe after an earthquake.
"Recommendation 2: Design New Buildings to Meet Recovery-Based Objectives. Because current building codes do not specifically address recovery-based objectives and resulting designs will yield inconsistent performance results, new buildings should be designed for specific recovery-based objectives that will support reliable reoccupancy and acceptable functional recovery times following a major earthquake.
"Recommendation 3: Retrofit Existing Buildings to Meet Recovery-Based Objectives. To address known vulnerabilities in the existing building inventory, existing buildings should be retrofitted to meet recovery-based objectives that will support reliable reoccupancy and acceptable functional recovery times following a major earthquake.
"Recommendation 4: Design, Upgrade, and Maintain Lifeline Infrastructure Systems to Meet Recovery-Based Objectives. To improve the performance of lifeline infrastructure systems in a major earthquake, a recovery-based approach for the design of new systems and the upgrade and maintenance of existing systems is needed. Because the operation of a lifeline infrastructure system depends on numerous components, designed and built over time, using a variety of standards, procedures, and material types, the recovery-based design, upgrade, and maintenance of a system are combined and considered under a single recommendation.
"Recommendation 5: Develop and Implement Pre-Disaster Recovery Planning Focused on Recovery-Based Objectives. Pre-disaster recovery planning involves making decisions before a disaster about how a community will recover after a disaster. Pre-disaster recovery planning by federal, state, local, tribal, and territorial governmental authorities, building owners and managers, and lifeline infrastructure system owners and operators is needed to improve reoccupancy and functional recovery times beyond what is achievable by design and construction alone.
"Recommendation 6: Provide Education and Outreach to Enhance Awareness and Understanding of Earthquake Risk and Recovery-Based Objectives. Many people underestimate the risks associated with earthquakes and do not understand the performance that building codes are intended to provide. Education and outreach are needed to enhance awareness and understanding of earthquake risk and recovery-based objectives, and to enable communities to make rational decisions about how the built environment should be designed and constructed.
"Recommendation 7: Facilitate Access to Financial Resources Needed to Achieve Recovery-Based Objectives. The probability of mitigation increases as the financial resources needed to facilitate mitigation are created and made available. A shift to a focus on recovery-based objectives will cost money. Those who will bear these costs will need to have access to additional financial resources needed to make such a shift. Existing mechanisms to facilitate access to financial resources should be augmented with newly developed and implemented mechanisms."
Let me just comment on Recommendation 3 above. It sounds wonderful. How about in the city of Seattle, they take action on the unreinforced masonry buildings (URM) that are known death traps? There will be no "reocccupancy" following a major earthquake. There will only be body extraction from the rubble. If we can't do the minimum to save lives today...my hope that new action will take place is nil given the lack of interest in public safety from a well-documented hazard.
