God, that's awful. On Sat, Feb 26, 2011 at 6:34 PM, David Mann <[email protected]> wrote: > 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 > [email protected] > http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net > to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow > the directions. >
-- Steve Desjardins -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
