Quake-Hit Haiti Failed to Learn Building Lessons After
2010 Disaster By Pearson, Vyas & Serisier, 8/19/21, Wall St. JournalWhile there was a huge effort by the int'l community to rebuild Haiti?s capital, Port-au-Prince, at a higher standard after the capital was ravaged by the 2010 quake, homes farther afield in cities like Les Cayes that were left unscathed remained death traps.
?This is a problem throughout the world. People pour a lot of money into fixing the thing that has just collapsed & put very little additional money into fixing bldgs that are vulnerable & will be hit by another earthquake,? said Roger Bilham, a seismologist at the Univ of Colorado and one of the first experts to survey the damage after the
2010 disaster.The homes that collapsed over the weekend were plagued by the same construction flaws that proved fatal in the capital a decade ago, acc. to accounts by their owners & initial analysis by engineers.
In addition to mixing too much water in concrete, other foremen tried to keep costs down by using sand, a major component of concrete, from nearby beaches, Bilham said. This contained small shells, making the final structure more fragile.
Average Haitians seldom have the cash to finish their houses in one go, meaning that they also sit unfinished for years, leaving the metal structure to corrode in the salty air, said Brad Johnson, president of Texas-based relief group Mission of Hope.
Sometimes construction workers opted for low-quality steel, which is more brittle, & dispensed with some horizontal metal structures that they deemed superfluous but which are vital to bind together bldgs in an earthquake, engineers said.
?People don?t have the money to build like they are supposed to & those who have money can?t find good materials,? said Renaud Bury, dean of civil engineering at American Univ of the Caribbean in Les Cayes.
Before 2010, Haiti had an antiquated French bldg code that contained no provisions for seismic activity. The new bldg codes in 2012 were in line with those followed in Japan & California, & Haitian authorities also distributed 45-page pamphlets with large illustrated images to instruct carpenters & foreman on how to build sturdier structures.
But the govt has done little to enforce the new regs, meaning many of the newer bldgs are also likely unsafe. In 2015, the govt created the Technical Bureau for Bldgs within the Ministry of Public Works to assess the stability of structures at risk of earthquake damage. The agency currently has no full-time staff or fixed address, & borrows employees from other depts for short-term assign- ments, said Hygin Raymond, an engineer who leads the bureau.
Raymond said the bureau has the legal powers to demand home & business owners tear down or repair unstable bldgs, but in practice the few assessments it is able to carry out are ignored.
?We don't have the coercive power to make our recommend- ations respected,? he said. ?We essentially are carrying out public awareness campaigns for the moment.?
With the govt in disarray after the assassination last month of the country?s president, better oversight of the construction industry seems even less likely, engineers said.
?We?ve had a new bldg code since 2012, but unfortunately there is no law that forces people to respect these rules,? said Claude Prepetit, a govt engineer who set up the country?s first earthquake surveillance center in the country in 2011.
The surveillance center, which analyses seismic movement in the country, is itself housed in a bldg that isn?t earthquake-proof for lack of funds, said Prepetit. When the temblor hit Saturday, the center?s networks weren?t working because the power had been out since Thurs, he said.
More than 80% of construction in the country remains informal, with little architectural planning, said Raphael Izmery, a member of the Nat'l College of Haitian Engineers & Architects, a trade assn. Aside from a tiny fraction of commercial construction, where builders & businesses are likely to pay taxes, govt regulators rarely monitor construction activity, he said.
Even after the 2010 quake, Izmery recalled how for years he watched one of the collapsed schools in Port-au-Prince being rebuilt on his daily work commute with the same informal techniques. ?I thought to myself, ?They?re doing it the same way all over again,? ? Izmery said.
Theft & corruption in the construction industry are also rampant. ?The workers steal, the salesmen at the store ask for extra money,? said Didier Wache, 64, whose small firm builds homes, schools & commercial bldgs in Port-au-Prince. ?You end up with less material, such as cement, than you thought you had.?
Earthquake-proofing existing buildings is possible but prohibitively expensive in Haiti. Retrofitting buildings normally costs about 1/4 to 1/3 of the building?s value, said Lizzie Collins, VP of engineering at Build Change, a Denver-based nonprofit org that has worked with homeowners in Haiti to improve construction techniques.
There is also limited interest from foreign donors to fund preventive measures, said Collins. ?We find that a lot of funding is more readily available after a disaster than before,? she said.