Getting Ready

Last December’s earthquake in Soviet Armenia was tragic evidence that a great gap exists between knowing how to reduce death and damage in natural disasters and translating that knowledge into action. At the time, an international effort was already under way to learn more about earthquakes, typhoons and other natural disasters, which have killed almost 3 million people in the last 20 years, and to use that information to provide better protection for people and property. This International Decade for Natural Hazard Reduction, as it is known, deserves the fullest U.S. support.

The importance of the basic goal of the project was emphasized at a briefing this week at Caltech by one member of a U.S. survey team that visited the Armenian quake site. Mihran Agbabian, a civil-engineering professor at the University of Southern California, said that Soviet engineers seemed to know as much about designing buildings to withstand earthquake stresses as American engineers but that their system “apparently does not have a way of accepting the knowledge of these people and putting it into use.” The Soviets’ own report concerning the disaster cited the “low quality of construction” and an insufficient study of the seismic situation as two reasons for the high death toll.

The decade of international effort, which officially begins next year, should help the Soviets and others by describing ways in which society can prepare in advance to protect life and property against earthquakes, hurricanes, tornadoes, tidal waves, floods, landslides, volcanic eruptions and wildfires. Developing nations will draw special attention. The United Nations and the U.S. Congress have endorsed the idea of the International Decade for Natural Hazard Reduction--the brainchild of Frank Press, president of the National Academy of Sciences.

No one expects to eliminate natural disasters, but this concerted effort could certainly reduce their effect, says George W. Housner, a Caltech professor who chaired the committee that drafted the project’s agenda. Housner, whose field is earthquake engineering, says that one project involves establishing an international system to record the strong and hazardous motion involved in earthquakes. If countries have more information, they will know better how to construct buildings to withstand such shaking.

Another project may help develop better methods to strengthen brittle structures like masonry buildings. Too often, when an earthquake strikes, masonry walls shatter or fall away so that floors and the roof drop like pancakes onto a stack. In Leninakan, Armenia, where damage was severe, 14 new nine-story prefabricated buildings whose edges were properly locked together took the punishment well, a structural engineer on the U.S. survey team reported.

California can play a big role in the disaster-mitigation effort. Gov. George Deukmejian has issued a proclamation supporting the work, and California’s building codes already are models used around the world. Californians would be better prepared, however, if the state could afford more of the seismic-safety work needed on public buildings, particularly at its large universities.

Preparing in advance for disaster can have a real payoff. For example, more than 250,000 people died and thousands more lost their homes in 1976 when a 7.8-magnitude earthquake hit Tangshan, China. In 1985 a quake of the same magnitude struck near Valparaiso, Chile, where 1 million people live. Only 150 died. Valparaiso’s buildings had more modern seismic design.

The report outlining the international project’s goals said that U.S. efforts could cut losses in this country in half by the year 2000. Making that dramatic a reduction would require intense research, stepped-up planning and public education, all of which cost money. But governments tend to put day-to-day problems ahead of meeting long-range risks that everyone wishes would simply go away. Earthquakes, floods and fires won’t go away. The International Decade for Natural Hazard Reduction deserves strong support to reduce their harm.