Zero death--What's behind New Zealand quake miracle?

来源：百度文库编辑：神马文学网时间：2024/05/08 10:41:47

_{Zero death--What's behind New Zealand quake miracle?}

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While New Zealand Prime Minister John Key says it is "a miracle" no one was killed in the Christchurch earthquake, experts believe it was the country's strict building codes that prevented mass fatalities.

The 7.0 magnitude quake brought down building facades, buckled train lines and caused damage estimated at more than a billion dollars in New Zealand's second largest city, but did not result in the high death tolls seen in similar disasters worldwide.

The statistics just this year make grim reading: at least 220,000 dead in a 7.0 magnitude quake in Haiti last January, more than 2,000 killed when a 6.9 magnitude tremblor struck northwest China in April.

The devastating Haiti earthquake:

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Officials say Christchurch residents were lucky the quake occurred before dawn on Saturday, when most were asleep in the relative safety of their homes. A few hours later and the streets would have been thronged with Saturday morning shoppers.

But they have nevertheless expressed amazement that no one died when such a powerful seismic jolt struck so close to a city of 340,000. So far, there have only been two reports of serious injuries.

"The only conclusion you can draw is that it's a miracle nobody was killed," said Key. "Parts of the city look like they've been put in the tumble dryer." New Zealand, which sits at the junction of two tectonic plates, is no stranger to earthquakes and experts said it had learned harsh lessons from a 1931 disaster at Napier, when a 7.8 magnitude tremor killed 256 people at Hawke's Bay.

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The director of the Joint Centre For Disaster Research at Wellington's Massey University, David Johnston, said that resulted in the implementation of stringent building standards. "There's no doubt it's a very, very significant reason why there wasn't more destruction," he said.

"In developing countries we've seen the wholescale collapse of buildings. In Christchurch, it's been the older buildings on the outskirts of the CBD that have been worst affected but the vast majority of structures have maintained their integrity. "It's a testament to the efforts in New Zealand since 1931."

Buildings collapsed in Yushu, China, earthquake:

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Pieter Burghout, chief executive of BRANZ, an industry-funded construction safety research body, said the most severely damaged buildings in Christchurch were made of bricks and mortar, materials that do not cope well with earthquakes.

He said modern homes in New Zealand were mostly constructed around light timber frames, which provided flexibility when a quake hit. "I've seen pictures of a house in Christchurch which fell off its foundations but it was still structurally sound," he said.

Burghout said New Zealand was among the world leaders in earthquake-resistant design and BRANZ had a large research facility in Wellington where a full-scale house could be built so testers could "shake it to bits" in a simulated tremor.

He said new office blocks in the country were built on isolated foundations, meaning they rest on a bed of rubber shock absorbers or ball bearings "so they can wobble around a bit if the big one comes."

Burghout conceded New Zealand's building standards were expensive, making them all-but-impossible to impose in developing nations such as Haiti, one of the world's most impoverished nations.

But he said the strict rules had been validated in Christchurch. "I think the people of Christchurch would pay any price to come through this earthquake unscathed," he said.

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