Why Doesn't the U.S. Build More Earthquake-Proof Buildings? (pressdemocrat.com) 129
schwit1 shares a report from the New York Times flagging America's surprising low usage of an engineering technique protecting buildings from earthquakes:
Chile, China, Italy, Mexico, Peru, Turkey and other countries vulnerable to earthquakes have adopted the technologies to varying degrees. But with notable exceptions, including Apple's new headquarters in Silicon Valley, the innovations have been used only sparingly in the United States. Seismic safety advocates describe this as a missed opportunity to save billions of dollars in reconstruction costs after the inevitable Big One strikes....
The debate over whether to build more resilient buildings in the United States has been held largely out of public view, among engineers and other specialists. But at stake is whether places like Silicon Valley, Seattle, Salt Lake City, San Francisco or Los Angeles might be forced to shut down after a direct hit -- and for how long. A federal study last year found that a quarter of the buildings in the Bay Area would be significantly damaged after a magnitude-7 earthquake, a disaster that would be compounded by the fact that 9 out of every 10 commercial buildings and 8 out of 10 homes in California are not insured for earthquakes. "Cities won't be usable for many months, if not years," said H. Kit Miyamoto, a member of the California Seismic Safety Commission, a government body that advises the state Legislature and the governor on earthquake issues. "Throwaway buildings equal a throwaway city."
In a severe earthquake, most American buildings are designed to crumple like a car in a head-on collision, dissipating the energy of the earthquake through damage. The goal is to preserve lives, but the building -- like a car after an accident -- may be useless. Ron Hamburger, an American structural engineer who is perhaps the leading authority on the building code, estimates that half of all buildings in San Francisco could be deemed unoccupiable immediately after a major earthquake.... Evan Reis, a co-founder of the U.S. Resiliency Council, a nonprofit organization, says the biggest impediment is that unlike in Japan, buildings change hands frequently in America and the developers who build them do not see the incentive in making them more robust. "Short-term thinking is absolutely the biggest villain," Reis said.
The article also points out that California's governor vetoed a bill last year that would've required buidings to be functional after an earthquake.
The debate over whether to build more resilient buildings in the United States has been held largely out of public view, among engineers and other specialists. But at stake is whether places like Silicon Valley, Seattle, Salt Lake City, San Francisco or Los Angeles might be forced to shut down after a direct hit -- and for how long. A federal study last year found that a quarter of the buildings in the Bay Area would be significantly damaged after a magnitude-7 earthquake, a disaster that would be compounded by the fact that 9 out of every 10 commercial buildings and 8 out of 10 homes in California are not insured for earthquakes. "Cities won't be usable for many months, if not years," said H. Kit Miyamoto, a member of the California Seismic Safety Commission, a government body that advises the state Legislature and the governor on earthquake issues. "Throwaway buildings equal a throwaway city."
In a severe earthquake, most American buildings are designed to crumple like a car in a head-on collision, dissipating the energy of the earthquake through damage. The goal is to preserve lives, but the building -- like a car after an accident -- may be useless. Ron Hamburger, an American structural engineer who is perhaps the leading authority on the building code, estimates that half of all buildings in San Francisco could be deemed unoccupiable immediately after a major earthquake.... Evan Reis, a co-founder of the U.S. Resiliency Council, a nonprofit organization, says the biggest impediment is that unlike in Japan, buildings change hands frequently in America and the developers who build them do not see the incentive in making them more robust. "Short-term thinking is absolutely the biggest villain," Reis said.
The article also points out that California's governor vetoed a bill last year that would've required buidings to be functional after an earthquake.
Re: You have to use rubber (Score:1)
Yes, I'm afraid many of the world's problems today could have been solved by a rubber.
They do (Score:4, Informative)
In earthquake zones earth quake buildings and reseitance are part of building codes. In tornado areas tornado codes are part of building codes. In the cold areas you get extra insulation techinques.
So overall the number of building built to withstand earthquakes is low, they are built where it matters.
Re:They do (Score:5, Interesting)
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Foreigners, regardless of where they are from, tend to underestimate the ability of Americans to make and follow civic rules like building codes.
These aren't guidelines, our buildings are actually built to the locally defined standards in the vast majority of cases. Local governments are Draconian about building without permits, and if you don't get paperwork in advance you might have to tear it down and start over. Very very rarely happens, because most people take the rules seriously.
The builders themselv
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"Local governments are Draconian about building without permits, and if you don't get paperwork in advance you might have to tear it down and start over. Very very rarely happens, because most people take the rules seriously."
Yes, to a point. The code requirements is the bare minimum to get passed, but this doesn't necessarily mean it's done right.
Now lets fast forward to the reality of the situation of today where old good inspectors are retiring and new ones are so overwhelmed with the amount of work an
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Everyone follows the codes because when the building inspectors show up ( multiple times during a build ) and find something out of code, they will force the rebuild of said portion of the project until it IS up to code. ( and it's time / money coming out of the contractors pocket )
They may hate them, but it's much easier ( and cheaper ) to do it right the first time so you get the Building Inspectors blessings.
When nobody has insurance everyone has insurance (Score:5, Insightful)
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Better hope the big one does not hit in the near future. I do not believe for one moment that the Trump administration would promote a trillion dollar relief fund for Democrat California. Trump would just blame the state government for lack of preparedness which (unlike his attack on the state for failing to fireproof trees) would have some justification.
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wrong, California cannot afford the water they are wasting and will deplete.
for all their bluster they're not distilling their water the smart way with renewable energy. Of course, the well to do there get affordable solar on the backs of taxpayers in other states that don't receive sufficient sunshine
they are parasites on other's dime. fuck California, we don't need it
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Imagine how much the income tax would cost in California if they had to actually pay the market price for the water they take from other states.
Imagine how much produce would cost. We can cut back residential use easily. Cutting back agricultural use costs money.
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Imagine how much the income tax would cost in California if they had to actually pay the market price for the water they take from other states.
Can you be more specific? Are you talking about the Colorado River which forms the eastern border for California, thus making it partly "California's water?" Or are we talking about a different diversion?
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trillion dollar relief fund for Democrat California
One can only hope for the big one to hit San Francisco. All the old hipster single family houses collapse and now they've got room to build high-rise apartments and alleviate their housing crisis.
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Earthquakes do not, on their own, rezone land.
Wishing misfortune on San Francisco is not a realistic strategy to turn it into New York. It isn't going to happen.
And most of those houses are stick-built, there is very little structural framework; they would neither fall down nor require being torn down, you can rebuild a damaged house of that design. Most of the strength is from the layers of wall and floor, when you remodel you're already rebuilding most of the strength. So the house might be listed as bein
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And most of those houses are stick-built
Right. But what goes is the foundation. And regardless of how many remodels people have thrown on top of it, that's the part which is 100+ years old.
Take a look at all the tract houses with a few cracks in the walls that still looked "OK" after an earthquake. But they were all red-tagged because the foundations were broken. They have to be taken down to the ground, new foundations built and a new structure put on top. Insurance-wise, they are write-offs.
And the banks (once they wind up with these properti
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I don't like Trump's rhetoric on a lot of stuff, but PG&E could have done a lot more to prevent wildfires, hence why they're expected to get a bailout over the massive fines and insurance recovery. A well known fact in the area is that PG&E was getting sued by environmentalists and homeowner associations for cutting 'too many trees' and the charges were respectively ruining the environment and the value/scenery of their McMansions.
It's also not the federal government's job to bailout the state for s
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It's not just that PG&E "could have done a lot more to prevent wildfires". It was their responsibility and duty to do a lot more. That was part of the deal when they were allowed to build out their power lines on public lands. They got the easements without the necessity of actually purchasing the land, and they took responsibility for maintenance and safety.
I doubt they'll listen, of course, but I've written my state rep and senator, and governor Newsom, urging them to absolutely NOT bail out PG
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Wood is actually fine, the problem is building square houses, instead of round houses set partly into the earth. Hobbit houses survive tornadoes a lot better.
But here is the thing: If the tornado directly hits your house, brick and wood both get damaged. The brick firehouse is built like a brick firehouse, and so it stayed standing, but it probably cost more to fix than it would to rebuild a wooden house.
It is rare for a tornado to hit a particular house, even in an area with a lot of tornadoes. If you live
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Better hope the big one does not hit in the near future. I do not believe for one moment that the Trump administration would promote a trillion dollar relief fund for Democrat California.
Don't worry about us, we have seismic codes.
I read the fine summary (Score:2)
California will have problems when the big one hits, but what about the rest of the country? If they get hit by a big one, they'll be way worse off. All of the interesting counties in California (the ones that have tall buildings in them) have not just seismic codes for new construction, but seismic retrofit requirements for many structures. Sure, there's still a lot of old stuff that's going to fall down, but we also have a lot of stuff that won't. Places in the midwest that don't have seismic codes or ret
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When the Big One hits the Pacific Northwest, it will happen in the ocean and the tsunami will scrape the coastal cities right off the Earth; high ground or bust!
Luckily they're small towns, but there will be a lot of deaths. When the shaking stops, run.
But the regular building codes for single family homes will already keep them up in an Earthquake in most places, and most apartment buildings aren't high rises. And places that do have high rises usually do have seismic codes, even if only for that category
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You can stop with the "illegals" crap. When you do that, you are insulting our great president. That's not patriotic at all.
American-up and support Trump. The immigration crisis and attendant expenses are all gone now. No need for a wall. Border Patrol can bring down the Help Wanted signs. The National Guard can go home. The Pentagon gets its money back. Trump has done what Congress could not do. Now, Congress can scrape all immigration paperwork off their desks right into the trash cans.
The immigration pro
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The reason they don't spend the money to build these structures to withstand quakes or carry earthquake insurance is because hardly anybody in the area does, which means if there's a catastrophic earthquake they all know and expect the state and federal government will bail them out with disaster relief to make them whole.
There's that and the policies tend to stink. The premiums and deductables are very high. For example, the policy I can get has a deductable which is something like 20% of the home value. That means I need to have something close to $100,000 damage before they pay a dime. The chances of having that much damage are actually quite small so we go without.
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And not all of California is an issue with earthquakes; down just a little south of Ventura, near the Oxnard Harbor, there is effectively ZERO earthquake threat as the fault lines are far away, and the ground is stable - yet compliant - to not transmit big shocks. We're more likely to get a tsunami than any earthquake damage. But that's flood insurance, not earthquake insurance.
"Effectively ZERO" as in moderate shaking risk [ca.gov]? You are lying to yourself if you live there and believe this. And about that "compliant" thing - it is true that loose sediment attenuates seismic waves with distance, but it bounces like the devil when the shock reaches you. A "compliant" soil is only of value if you aren't built on it.
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The 90% earthquake policy (10% deductible) on a $3 million commercial building our family owns is only about $5500/yr. There we're basically gambling that an earthquake which demolishes the building will happen
Re: When nobody has insurance everyone has insuran (Score:1)
In order to understand why Californians, especially San Fransiscans, don't really think ahead like that, is you have to think like a Democrat. Plan A is always "things will always just work out", and plan B is "but if they don't, then we'll just make rich people pay for it". That scenario even applies if they happen to be said rich people and still don't have enough to cover their losses. This is why Hillary didn't have a concession speech, and why younger Democrats think socialism will work if only we just
Pretty much true it seems (Score:3)
"Because it's got a backyard view of the Gateway Arch!"
---Yea, it sure does. And if you can't quite see it from your back yard, you can go stand on top of the levy and see it from there.
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Living near St Louis, I'm always amazed at how (after a major flood where several levies in the area failed) companies have built housing subdivisions in low-lying farm land, behind levies, along the Mississippi river.
The real issue there is how are they getting the permits? I understand why companies want to build floodbait, they get paid whether it makes sense to build there or not. The question is, who's getting paid to permit these obviously unsafe developments?
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The Collapse of Memphis (Score:2)
Memphis is a nice city. I love to walk around there (and eat the pork).
But here's the thing - even though it's close to the New Madrid Seismic Zone it's not in California so people don't get constant reminders - just a "big one" that may or may not destroy their buildings within their lifetime. A roll of the dice says that it'll be after their lifetimes, but the odds aren't that great. So why add 30% extra to build for seismic effects?
When the next one hits, most of the City of Memphis will collapse. Ju
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Re:maybe it's more about actual lifespan (Score:5, Interesting)
The first time I visited Seattle, circa 1974, I passed a construction site that apparently was destined to be the Kingdome. It lasted until 2000 and was destroyed not by an earthquake, but because the team threw the usual tantrum, threatening to leave town unless the city built them a new one.
Much later I visited the Odeon of Ephesus, a concert theater which although located on a quake-riddled coast, is still in use for its original purpose after 3000 years.
Re: maybe it's more about actual lifespan (Score:1)
In Chile every building has to be built to withstand an eathquake 8.0 withoit any structural damage.
We gad in 1960 a 9.5, in 1985 an 8.5 and in 2010 an 8.8, so every 25 years.
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raise the rents (Score:2)
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No, no, no, it means the landlord has to pay for their temporary accommodations while they rebuild, they neither make extra money nor escape rent controls.
No way! (Score:1)
Imagine the drone-footage (Score:2)
Cupertino a field of smoldering ruins - and within the ashes, the glowing, mostly intact torus of Apple HQ2 comes into view, lights are on, people strolling around.
It will be a very rude awakening for most citizens, when The Big One hits California. It will be every bit as bad as the movies make it - and worse.
People will realize too late that while in the long term, everybody is dead, it can also happen short-term.
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Cupertino is only a few recently-built high rises that would be OK, and 2 story wood structures sprawling until you're Somewhere Else.
The whole town will be mostly fine, except where a house fell into a sinkhole or something. The density isn't high enough for big fires.
Cultural and political differences (Score:5, Insightful)
In summary, if government fear that they would pay the political price of burying 50.000, 100.000 people into a landfill, things will improve. In order to generate that fear population must take the possibility of lying next to a garbage dump instead of consecrated ground more seriously.
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One of the reasons that in Turkey we do not have a government change for some years is that the Prime Minister and his coalition partners who were in power during the 1999 Earthquake, have not been able to recover from the political impact. Only one of the parties survived barely, rest and their political descendants are still trying to gain back public trust. In US I do not remember any such case.
17,000 people died in the Turkey earthquake. When there's a disaster in the US, hardly anyone dies.
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17,000 people died in the Turkey earthquake. When there's a disaster in the US, hardly anyone dies.
Interestingly some gentleman, who is said to be Stalin which might be the case or not, once said that:
A Single Death is a Tragedy; a Million Deaths is a Statistic
I guess you are right and he is wrong, and there is a lower threshold that needs to be passed for the event to be seen as a tragedy. Katrina claimed close to 2.000 people with all the preparation and early warning, and it is "hardly anyone". Maria claimed close to 3.000 people and I guess "Puerto Rico is not in US" would be answer of most people. So I do not know where is the boundary that makes people care
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"Puerto Rico is not in US" isn't a nationalist or dismissive point though.
When it comes to "following the building code," their performance is exactly as you would predict for a Caribbean nation, not a US State. That's true not only of the people doing the building, but the government too.
Culturally they are not part of the US. They're US citizens but for the most part when they're in Puerto Rico they're in a different place where things are done differently. Things like all the silly rules and stuff are pa
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Culturally they are not part of the US.
This is not true at all. They may not be a part of your specific sub-culture, and Porto Rico does have a lot of Latin American influence. But so does Texas. The United States has a lot of subcultures.
The US is in denial ... (Score:2)
... about a lot of shit that hits the expense side of the ledger.
Re: The US isn't like those places (Score:3, Interesting)
> build houses that will be very difficult to demolish
That reminds me of an article I read about a software engineer who built his own house, then lost it to foreclosure in the recession.
The bank sold it to someone who went to demolish it, and ended up with an employee accidentally destroying a backhoe. They THOUGHT it was just conventional code-compliant concrete-block construction. It turns out, the guy RADICALLY over-engineered it, and built the walls using the same concrete and amount of rebar used t
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LOL... Sounds like the house my granddad built for himself. He was a Seabee (Naval construction battalions... they built fortifications, or demolished enemy fortifications, often while under fire.) during WW2. He retired to Florida just after the Cuban missile crisis. And he built his home accordingly; using his Seebee skillset and with the consideration that Cuba was trying to get ahold of nukes to toss across the Straits of Florida. And that same house is still there, having survived hurricanes, incl
Earthquake proofing may not make sense for US. (Score:4, Insightful)
If, as the summary suggests, US building code means the humans will survive, even if the building doesn't, then it becomes a simple tale of economics.
Essentially, do you buy insurance?
And for the Californian economy, according to the article, it makes little economic sense to do so. It's like adding a swimming pool. You might do it because *you* want a swimming pool, but don't expect anyone else to pay you the cost when you expect to sell.
Hell, given how tech revolutionizes building design, there's a pretty good case to be made that not tearing your buildings down every 50 years (and making the design decisions that accommodate that decision) is a sort of elitism, choosing personal culture "I want my building to last forever" over the needs of the future inhabitants of the space.
Alaska figured it out (Score:1)
https://www.adn.com/opinions/national-opinions/2018/12/02/heres-who-to-thank-that-we-all-survived-the-quake-on-friday/
Anchorage is a much smaller city, but the building codes there saved lives this last winter. I used to work in a 6 story building there built on earthquake rollers. I was amazed to find when moving to Seattle how much further along Anchorage was in building code safety.
Insurance... (Score:2)
The insurance companies make it damned near impossible to have AFFORDABLE earthquake insurance in California. Which means those that are paying for places to be built go for the "save lives, not the building" option.
So, insurance companies. They're the stumbling block.
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what i am waiting for (Score:2)
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Re:what i am waiting for / Try These (Score:2)
Do a quick search for "Monolithic Dome" They look funny but will survive anything. If you must use stick built, look for something called "Balloon Frame"
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Balloon Frame is worse for fire, which is the greater risk.
https://www.firerescue1.com/co... [firerescue1.com]
Domes or Hobbit holes are the way to go. If you're stuck in a box, invest in a good storm shelter.
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Dome homes also suffer from a lifetime of endless and expensive roof maintenance headaches, because they're like concentrated chunks of every roofing complication you can throw at a building. Literally every window becomes a skylight roof penetration that has to be rigorously flashed & sealed, and even the slightest defect results in leaks.
Seriously, drive around America and just TRY to find a dome home that was built in the 1960s-1980s that's still around today. VERY few are still inhabited and well-ma
Misleading (Score:5, Insightful)
Overall, I think this article is pretty misleading. Building codes in California have evolved over time and most recent construction is in fact pretty resistant to earthquakes. We have learned from every earthquake and made changes accordingly.
It is mainly old buildings (built before isolation was a thing) that are the problem. Look at the 1989 earthquake in Santa Cruz (the Loma Prieta earthquake). It destroyed downtown Santa Cruz but only around 7 people died there. Hundreds died in San Francisco and Oakland due to the collapse of the double-decker freeway (the Cypress structure). But the entire SF skyline survived. The bay bridge mostly survived. The golden gate bridge survived.
It is not like planners in California are ignoring the risk of earthquake. Maybe the cost benefit analysis is just a bit different here in California.
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Engineering quality (Score:1)
For the same reaon(s) the US don't buils cars with proper suspension mechanism; don't make houses that pass the sneeze test; don't use indows with a notable effect beyond what a better curtain would provide; don't have a power grid much beyon what Robinon would have build upon his lonely island... ...for some reason, everyday engineering in the US seems stuck on a "works for me well enough"-level. Which is curious, because the other end of the spectrum, namely literally rocket science and high-tec computin
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and that's why thousands have died in the last 30 years in the USA from Earthquakes... oh wait 78 did
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Ummm... Nope (Score:2)
In the case of China, the "degree" is pretty much "not at all". The average building in China (not the high-profile skyscrapers) can't withstand 25 years of normal use, much less an earthquake. Hell... some of them can't handle remaining upright until construction is completed [gizmodo.com]
I'm sure someone here is bored enough to go out and look up figures for like-category earthquake
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For different reasons, China and the US suffer from the same not-thinking-longterm-enough syndrome.
In China, because the land is only leased from the government for 50 or 70 years, nobody wants to invest in maintenance of a building, for fear of "wasting" money.
As a result, the buildings begin to deteriorate as soon as they are erected.
In the US, apparently because people sell the houses rather quickly, people don't want to invest too much money into things that don't directly benefit them immediately and t
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95% of the US is not a Hurricane and Earthquake zones so the building code works for 95% of the nation with 5% of the nation paying significantly more in In
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I mostly agree with you and basically think the entire premise of this article is wrong. If you look at new construction in Florida you will see building codes that focus on wind damage. Roofs that are perfectly to code here in California would be red-flagged in Florida because 60 mile per hour winds (which happen regularly in Florida) will blow the roof right off. The steel posts that hold up traffic lights in Florida look like they are designed to support King Kong when compared with the wimpy fragile one
Short-term thinking & self denial (Score:2)
For the same reasons the keep building houses made of plywood in tornado alley ... short-term thinking & self denial
Earthquakes ... (Score:2)
Sadly, in Seattle, the most popular buildings for hipsters to put on the registry are all the old brick schoolhouses. So when the Big One hits, all your kids get squashed. But in the meantime, enjoy your neighborhood ambiance.
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They CAN be retrofitted. But you can't do it without spending a lot of money and/or making the building ugly as heck.
The universal answer (Score:2)
to the question "Why don't they...?" is "Money."
Why was the sodium atom arrested? (Score:2)
They do/are where it makes sense (Score:2)
Hospitals, police/fire operations centers, and critical infrastructure are required to be designed for immediate occupancy after an earthquake. Base isolation is one of many solutions used, but other solutions do not preclude being able to achieve the design objective.
Commercial buildings are less likely to be designed to that standard, as the economics are simply not there. If there is a 50% probability of an earthquake causing major damage to the building (not collapse) in the next 50 years, taking your
Why doesn't the US build more WIND-resistant bldgs (Score:3)
Let's consider a variation of this: why doesn't the US build more wind-resistant buildings?
Most people don't realize it, but Florida in general, and the Miami-Fort Lauderdale-WPB area in particular, have more tornadoes per urban square mile per year than anywhere else in the country... and that INCLUDES "tornado alley". So... why aren't there weekly headlines about tornadoes tearing through South Florida neighborhoods? Because they barely make a dent in buildings here.
For all intents and purposes, an EF0 tornado is basically 10 seconds of a bad tropical storm. An EF1 tornado is basically 15 seconds of a category 1 hurricane. An EF2 tornado is basically 20 seconds of hurricane Wilma. An EF3 tornado is basically Hurricane Andrew's eye wall (which basically produced the same kind of damage you'd expect to see from a 10 mile diameter EF3 multi-vortex stovepipe tornado).
Put another way, a little baby EF1 tornado that would tear the roofs from stapled-together McMansions in Kansas City barely makes a dent in an average post-Andrew suburban South Florida neighborhood.
The OVERWHELMING majority of tornadoes that strike the US are EF0 or EF1, and most of the stronger ones are EF2. The US might have a couple of EF3 tornadoes per year, a few EF4 tornadoes per decade, and maybe a dozen EF5 tornadoes per century.
Don't get me wrong... if an EF5 tornado is on the ground, the only safe place to be is "far away". In theory, an EF5 tornado can even damage a reinforced concrete bunker if it strikes it in the worst possible way. But if places like Kansas, Alabama, and Missouri had Dade County building codes, new buildings would be almost completely invulnerable to the overwhelming majority of tornadoes that strike there.
By South Florida construction standards, a neighborhood of "tornado alley" McMansions might as well be a trailer park. I spent a summer living in Dallas after college, and was absolutely HORRIFIED to see how houses get built there. Every day, I'd drive to work past a neighborhood that was under construction... it literally looked like they were stapling sheets of 4x8 waferboard onto frames built from spindly matchsticks.
Trivia: after Florida, Britain has the second-most tornadoes per urban square mile per year if you broaden the definition to include Canada and Europe... for more or less the same reason as Florida: cold air slamming into the hot, humid Gulf Stream. And like Florida, most of those tornadoes barely make a dent unless they're at least the equivalent of EF2 or larger (I think Britain uses a different scale, though). Generally speaking, UK building standards are comparable to those in central Florida, like Orlando... not quite as rugged as Miami, but WAY better than the average building standards in most parts of the US.
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Money (Score:3)
Because the United States is not the Soviet Union? (Score:1)
Generally speaking, countries don't build buildings. Soviet Union did. So did East Germany. And there was this Wall...
Rewording the question to something that is consistent with the real world might make it answerable. Just the effort of rewording it might teach the asker something.