By Patricia Lee Sharpe
February 22, 2005: another earthquake in Iran.
Death toll: over 600.
Result of previous promises to counteract the “adverse consequences” of temblors: “disappeared into oblivion.”
That being the case, says Iran’s President Mohammad Khatami, according to www.payvand.com/news, reconstruction “efforts should be concentrated on quake resistance...to minimize property losses and casualties.”
Don’t hold your breath.
In 2003 more than 26,000 people died when an earthquake destroyed the history-laden city of Bam in Southern Iran in 2003. Over 1,600 were killed in Birjand in eastern Iran in may 1997. In June 1990 around 40,000 died in a tremor in the northern Iranian province of Gilan
Turkey like Iran is earthquake prone. A quake that rocked the Turkish cities of Izmir and Istanbul left more than 17,000 dead in 1999. Morocco and Algeria were hit by killer quakes in the past few years. (Figures above courtesy of BBC News.)
Earthquakes can’t be prevented or predicted. But death and destruction can be minimized by enforcing building codes based on what’s known of how building materials and techniques react to the stress of extreme seismic events. Japan and California are cases in point.
Since many quake-ravaged parts of the world are occupied by Muslim populations, I decided to see if earthquake-proofing plays much of a role in determining which projects will win the prestigious Aga Khan Awards for Architecture. Working through the Aga Khan Development Network (AGDN) website, I found 88 winners over the years. Most were beautiful. Only two were earthquake-related.
The Courtyard Houses built in Agadir, Morocco in 1964, arose as a response to the need for “massive reconstruction” following a disastrous earthquake in 1960. Compact, inexpensive to build, easy to maintain, this housing, which was recognized during the 1978-80 first AKAA award cycle, was “suited to the life-style of an urbanized middle-income Muslim population.” Not much use for Iranian or Turkish villagers.
However, the ninth and most recent AKAA award cycle recognized a “sandbag shelter” developed by Nader Khalili at his California Institute of Earth Art and Architecture. Cal-Earth focuses on adobe technologies, apparently, and its winning proposal for housing “victims of natural disaster and wars” quickly, cheaply and temporarily employs earth and chickenwire structures derived from Iranian “vernacular building methods.” Sounds promising.
Searching further through AGDN site resources, I found an index listing every conceivable subject relating to architecture. I also stumbled on ArchNet, “an international online community for architects, planners, urban designers, landscape architects, conservationists, and scholars, with a focus on Muslim cultures and civilisations.” But I came up with only one article analyzing structural weaknesses vis-à-vis earthquakes in Muslim countries.
This article, “The Iran Earthquake,” reports the findings of the United Nations Office of Disaster Relief following an earthquake that had struck Manjil two months earlier in June 1990. Houses and other buildings collapsed, a team of experts found, for three reasons: the inherent inappropriateness of materials or construction methods and the careless or criminal (my word) failure to build according to known standards and established codes.
For instance, timbers traditionally used in house-building, but now in short supply, are often replaced these days by steel elements, which would be fine, if the joints didn’t fail due to sloppy welding. The superior strength of reinforced concrete ringbeams on wall tops also has little protective value if the brickwork below is poorly laid. And garden-variety contractor cost-cutting didn’t help either: weak concrete mixtures, poorly placed steel, undersized columns. The UNDRO experts recommended enhanced code requirements for rebuilding. They also pointed out that enforcing the existing code would have saved lives.
The greatest obstacle to reducing the death toll from earthquakes, it seems, isn’t a matter of hard-to-come-by financial outlays or yet-to-be-invented engineering so much as politics. The UN experts didn’t put it this way, but the Islamic Republic of Iran, evidently, is not immune to profiteering and the kind of high and low level graft that protects heartless greed. Even if the Aga Khan architectural competition more strenuously encouraged the design of earthquake-resistant structures, the most ingenious ideas would be subverted by inspectors ignoring bad construction.
I am not an expert on construction and architecture. My research has not been exhaustive. But having learned this much this fast, I find myself more impatient than ever with the terrible death toll exacted by earthquakes in Iran and elsewhere.
The uneducated and the faithful say earthquakes are “God’s will.” Whatever. We can’t prevent them.
Most of the suffocated, crushed, concussed, contused or just plain bereft, however, are victims of human indifference or corruption--or criminally misplaced priorities. Evidently the government of Iran, for all the jaw-jaw about "quake resistance," prefers to invest in infrastructure for nuclear weapons development.
Not that Americans should play holier-than-thou here. Our own government is cutting back on social services while augmenting the defense budget and boasting that the U.S. is the most powerful nation, ever. Neo-Caesar George W. Bush seems to enjoy bestriding “the world like a Colossus,” which, history would tell him, loomed over Rhodes a mere 56 years. He and his administration also need to remember that swagger begets swagger--including arms races, the impulse to acquire a nuclear capacity because the neighborhood feels insecure or simply for reasons of national pride and honor.
Meanwhile, the UN experts at Manjil noted that traditional mud and reed roofs are also not so hot to be caught under when the earth starts quaking. Maybe a little chickenwire would help.