On Feb 27, 2011, at 2:29 AM, Bob Sullivan wrote: > We're all grateful the death toll isn't an order of magnitude higher. > Seeing where you were, you have to think that white facade was re-enforced.
I did wonder that, it's the only explanation I can come up with. Having said that, a number of reinforced historic buidings did collapse but they were probably significantly older. Their retrofitted reinforcing had held up in September but this one was just too much. The country actually learned about the dangers of masonry construction from the Wairarapa earthquake of 1855 but I don't think the lessons were quite clear enough, and the seismic risk in Canterbury may have been underestimated until more modern times. You can imagine the reaction of building owners if they were told to reinforce or else. In the back of my head I can remember that they had been given that very ultimatum but the deadline had been extended due to the costs involved. > San Francisco has many such old facades, but survives the big quakes. > Ordinances after the 1906 quake required their decorative stone work > be tied off. I'm not familiar with our seismic building codes so I couldn't speculate on what our requirements are. I also have Kobe in the back of my mind. I know we will recover from this but as Bob W observed, the economic impact is going to be massive. The psychological impact will be great as well. Many people are going to be very apprehensive about returning to work in buildings declared safe. I saw on the news yesterday that one of the businesses in the CTV building had moved in there after their previous building was condemned after the September quake. That condemned building is still standing. Dave -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List PDML@pdml.net http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
