Lessons of Kobe Quake

* “Lessons of Kobe: Hope, Caution” (Feb. 12) teaches us that it is unsafe to build on artificial landfill and reclaimed marshland. Two pages later, in “Friends or Foes” we read that the Orange County Board of Supervisors approved a plan to build 3,300 homes in and around the Bolsa Chica wetlands. Wetlands are the habitat which can provide homes for the greatest variety of non-human animals, and are the worst place for human’s homes in earthquake-prone California.

California has already lost over 90% of its wetlands to development. Leave the rest for the birds and fishes.

RUSSELL STONE

Los Angeles

* I read your article with interest; however, it failed to mention the important work of my husband, Jean-Pierre Bardet, an associate professor in the University of Southern California’s civil engineering department, one of the geotechnical experts whose work in Kobe is being funded by the National Science Foundation. Bardet has been working directly with the eight Japanese reconnaissance teams from the Research Committee on the South Hyogo Earthquake Disaster sponsored by the Japanese Society of Soil Mechanics and Foundation Engineering. Much of the geotechnical information already available about the Kobe earthquake (from which our experts are learning “lessons”) is due to his efforts.

Following the Northridge earthquake, Bardet organized a USC-based bulletin board on the Internet to enable geotechnical engineers to exchange data and emergency information about that and other earthquakes. When the Kobe quake struck, the bulletin board system was already in place, so the Japanese engineers were invited to use the system. It proved to be an extremely helpful tool. Consequently, the Japanese researchers agreed to release all their data and post all of their findings on the Internet bulletin board. Together with three professors at Gifu University, Bardet has been posting specific and detailed geotechnical information in English, which is being made available to earthquake engineers in the U.S. and Japan virtually as it is gathered. Soon there will be accompanying digitized photographs which will detail sites of interest to U.S. engineers.

True, “it may be months before any definitive engineering report on Kobe is ready,” as your article states, but the U.S. seismic community does not have to wait for official reports to continue learning lessons from Kobe.

MARILYN HARRIS

Pasadena