Earthquake Building Codes BY: SPENCER FAWCETT

Governing Entity Syracuse City Building Official: Brian Lemmons Syracuse City Building Permit Technician: Brenda Leota

Connection to Earth Science Earthquakes are a very important part of Earth Sciences. The name EARTHquake implies that it has a lot to do with EARTH Science. In Earth Science this year we took time to learn about earthquakes in a unit that also involved tectonic plates, plate boundaries, and the orogeny of mountains. We all should pretty much be experts because of how much we talked about this.

Earthquakes cause death Earthquakes are sudden natural events that happen when tectonic plates within the earth accumulate enough stress due to getting caught on one another that they snap back into the places where they belong. A 2009 U.N. sponsored CRED report said “Approximately 60% of all deaths caused by natural disasters since 2000 were earthquake related.” (Earthquake) That’s more than half of all natural disaster deaths!

Buildings Collapse According to “Earthquake Engineering” it is not actually earthquakes themselves that cause a loss of life. The thing causing people to die is unstable buildings. This was the reason there was so much death in Haiti the 2010 earthquake. Their buildings were not built to live through an earthquake and crumbled when an earthquake actually hit. “An estimated 230,000 to 300,000 people died as a result of the earthquake.” (Earthquake Engineering) Do we want this to be the fate of buildings, especially schools, in Utah? What happens when “The Big One” actually does happen? Will we be prepared?

Damage to Buildings Earthquakes do not only cause death but they also cause major damage to buildings and houses. This ends up costing millions of dollars to clean up and repair homes that have been damaged. In the 2010 Haiti earthquake there was 7,200-8,100 damage done and an estimated 15,000-25,000 deaths per 1,000,000 inhabitants of Haiti. (Powell)

Nepal Recently Nepal had a devastating earthquake strike not far from Kathmandu. An interview with the man in charge of the building codes in Nepal was conducted recently. He said that there were many things inside the building codes that would have lessened the damage done to Nepal if they had just followed them. We can avoid huge disasters like Nepal if we follow our building codes, but if we had even more strict building codes we would be more sure about how safe we really are.

Scientific Reasoning Earth’s tectonic plates are moving and we cannot stop that. We can prepare though. By using technology that can lessen the damage done by earthquakes millions of lives per year could be saved. Especially here in Syracuse, when the big earthquake everyone has been talking about does happen we should be ready. Because the Wasatch front has a ton of tension it will snap back with the rest of the plate once the stress being put on it is too much. An earthquake WILL happen as a result. Tectonic plates are not small things, they’re pretty big compared to us.

More Strict Building Codes Are Needed We NEED more strict building codes so we don’t end up like Haiti or Nepal where they were unprepared and many fatalities happened. Even though we have building codes and follow them we need more strict ones so that we can be prepared for the big earthquake along the Wasatch Front that is scheduled to happen any day now. We live in an area where the earth has a ton on tension on the North American plate. One day the entire thing is going to elastic back together like a rubber band and were going to be moving with it. We need our buildings to be able to handle getting shaken and possibly moved from where their original foundations were. Another issue is the schools in Syracuse. Syracuse High School is new so it has been built with extra safety standards that older schools don’t have the luxury of having. We should renovate the old schools, especially the elementary schools that don’t have many earthquake safety procedures taken into consideration. How would you feel if your child were crushed by a collapsing ceiling inside of their school?

Bibliography "Earthquake." World of Earth Science. Ed. K. Lee Lerner and Brenda Wilmoth Lerner. Detroit: Gale, Science in Context. Web. 27 May "Earthquake Engineering." Sitable. Nature Education, Web. 27 May Gale, Jason. "Nepal Building Code Author Says Disaster Was Waiting To Happen." BloombergBussiness. Bloomberg L.P., Web. 27 May Powell, Andrew, and Eduardo Cavallo. "Haiti Reconstruction Cost May near $14 Billion, IBD Study Shows." IDB. Inter-American Development Bank, Web. 29 May 2015.