Is an international 'minimum standard' required?

Seeing yet another catastrophe happening in the Philippines, it has made me think that we (as in the human race) do not do enough to protect ourselves from certain events that take place.

Now, please don't get me wrong, I am not trying to make light of the horrors taking place in the Philippines, or indeed those that have happened in other countries; nor am I intending for any blame to be apportioned, as there is clearly no-one to blame when events like this take place.

However, looking at the devastation, and reflecting on some of the devastation that has taken place in prior events, it seems to me that we are perhaps not doing enough to protect our people when we are building and designing buildings and infrastructure.

In the Philippines for example, there seems to be a hell of a lot of wood and corrugated tin lying about, which would suggest that those are the materials that made up a considerable amount of the buildings.

Even in this country, we seem to throw houses up in the smallest of places, as quickly as possible and then wonder when it all goes wrong and there is flooding because the drains cannot cope.

Whilst I appreciate that no-one could ever legislate for all the various types of events that take place, and of course I accept that it is sadly somewhat inevitable that there is going to be considerable loss of life, however surely that can not be an excuse for not doing anything?

Should we have (or at least work toward) an internationally agreed minimum standard for homes and buildings with thought and features to withstand massive storms and events? Stuff like a minimum depth of foundation, thickness and number of skins of walls, minimum size, standards for how the roof is held on and what materials it is made of to enable it to stay in place under the extremes of weather. And perhaps a maximum 'saturation' level for housing in particular so that they are not all crushed up together and over-powering water and drainage systems?

 

The cost would make it impossible to do as an immediate, wholesale thing - but there are a lot of properties that are going to be rebuilt in the Philippines now which is surely the ideal time to try and build a bit of safety into them?

Its some of the simple things too - here we are on the verge of lashing out billions of pounds on HS2; whether we like it or not, it will happen, but the climate of this country isn't exactly ideal for it - leaves on the line, ice, snow etc? If we are going to spend that sort of money, why aren't we looking at Maglev which is not only faster but in theory should be affected less by leaves, ice and snow.

 

I suppose that is my point really Sheal - the supposed 'developed' nations will pat themselves on the back for sending aid (be it monetary or otherwise), when in reality that aid is only just scratching the surface and not really offering much of a solution. If that aid was somehow targeted on a long term, sustained basis with the remit that it must be used to provide buildings and infrastructure to an agreed minimum standard, surely that would only help?

 

FC, unfortunately, although a good idea, it's not practical or sustainable. It's the scale of the problem that is the factor. Even trying to do what you suggest for a country such as the Phillipines would bankrupt us before we got much of it going. It's a very long term thing and needs a complete change in the social structure of each country before a start can even be made.

I travel extensively in third world countries and am appalled at the conditions the people have to live in - but it's the reality of live in those countries. Help from first world countries can't work unless the third world countries change their whole ethos. If we can encourage them to improve their social and political structure we could then help them to improve the physical structure of the country.

To a certain extent the old ways of building in these countries was more sustainable for the poor and subsistence living people. Their structures were poorly built from locally available material (wood) and were easily rebuilt. Nowadays the people have more belongings, want to build bigger and better structures but don't really have the assets to do so. That's why they can't afford to even insure their houses and property.

An example of the change in building was brought home to me when travelling in Peru. The country has been developing well for decades now and the people are living better and constructing more solid houses. Unfortunately, the country suffers considerably from earthquakes. The general population can't afford to build their homes from pre-stressed concrete but do attempt to build from local brick. Although the brick structures can withstand the regular tremors they're not so good with the bigger quakes.

In the last five years there have been 20 quakes in excess of 4.6 - just in the Trujillo area. The peculiar weather conditions on the western side of Peru means that they get virtually no rain, so the old traditional method of building was to build wooden walls and a straw roof. Not straw roofs as we have them but just canes laid across the top of the walls and straw laid on top - not fixed to anything. When a quake occurs the straw roof drops and doesn't harm the occupiers. Whereas there are many deaths from solid tile roofs and chimneys falling in.

This is only a simple example of the problems that occur in even the developing countries.

 

They're heartbreaking but there's so little we can do. The aid agencies are the best way to help because they actually put people on the ground.

I've been to areas where disasters have happened and it makes you feel so helpless.

I was a little bit involved in the repatriation of Tristan Da Cunha in 1963 and that went smoothly because there were only about 200 inhabitants.

We were on Madagascar when the big tsunami hit and went on to see the people on Zanzibar after the event. It didn't do too much damage there but some of the fishermen were a bit traumatised and wouldn't go back out fishing for some time. We helped in the fundraising for victims of the tsunami when we went on into the Indian Ocean. We were only able to go to places that were not damaged too much and that was bad enough.

We also went to support the people of New Orleans after Katrina hit and you would have thought that the American government would have pulled out all the stops. They made a complete hash of the whole thing and then tried to cover it up (haven't got time to go into the details at the moment - but I shall, later, if anyone wants to know). The residents were quite happy to say what they thought of their government. This banner was typical.

 

I'd be interested in hearing more when you have time shiney

 

Re New Orleans after Katrina:-

I've deleted the photos I took because I didn't want them on my computer. Although I didn't take many of the damage because it would be too much like voyeurism.

Immediately after Katrina the place was treated like a forgotten city and a political football!

The city is in an area of storms and high seas and has been built with defences to them and contingencies if they get too bad. The main thing is to protect against a high influx of water. The enormous problems caused by the flooding should not have happened if the defences had been built correctly. There would still have been damage but not such devastation and loss of life.

The problems start from 50 years ago.

The city is inland (not a lot) and is on the banks of Lake Ponchartrain which is 630 sq miles. The lake is not totally landlocked, so is an estuary connected to the Gulf of Mexico and gets some tidal influx. As the city was growing during the early and middle decades of the 20th Century they decided to increase the protection of the city by building the levees higher.

This was done by the Army Engineering Corps. Unfortunately, it wasn't done properly either due to bad design, bad building, incompetence or a number of other possible reasons. When building the levees they make enormous walls of soil (like natural hills) and then pile drive metal panels down through the levees to form a solid wall. The panels were driven down but not far enough into the subsoil! Storms/hurricanes drive flood waters across the lake and the levees should withstand them - although some water does get over them.

The motion of the water scoured away soil at the bottom of the levees (like a back tide) and, because the panels weren't deep enough, allowed water to breach underneath the levees as well as pouring over the top. The whole problem was compounded by some more incompetence! The Army built canals, with pumping stations, to take away any flood water and under normal conditions could cope with floodwater. They, also, didn't have their walls constructed down into the subsoil. They should still have been able to withstand the flooding if the canals could have taken the water away.

This was the next problem. The politicians had decided to save money by not having the pumping stations full time as they thought staff could get to them if they foresaw a problem. Still not a real problem except for the further incompetence of planning. The pumping stations ran off the cities grid and didn't have any freestanding backup! So, the hurricane took out the city power and the pumping stations were useless.

After the hurricane we all heard about the tens of thousands of refugees collection in the football stadium and the problems of what to do with them. They were without food and water and the politicians (national and local) couldn't decide where to move them to. So they didn't move them for nearly two days.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) took over running the rescue. No one told them that there were another 7,000 people sheltering and trapped in the the warehouses in the docks and they hadn't bothered to look. It took them three days to find out! During which the temperature had risen to over 100 degrees.

By then they had evacuated the people in the stadium but didn't know what to do with these new lot. It should have been easy because the city's hotels could easily take that many people. Unfortunately, they were full of politicians, reports and emergency people. A complete cockup.

Then there was reconstruction. After nearly two weeks of authorities wrangling over who should provide the millions of dollars for it the money started coming in. Then there was the weeks of wrangling over who would manage the funds and reconstruction. Nothing got done for at least six months.

In the meantime, help had been coming in from all over the world but nothing from their own country. Even the media had stopped bothering. That's why they put up banners such as that one I posted above.

Once the rescue throughout the city got started, after a few days, FEMA were well organised in touring the devastaed ares by boat and scouting out the rescues necessary. They had a system of painting symbols on the sides of the houses for the rescue boats to use. They were circles, divided into four sections, with numbers in them. The numbers represented how many dead people, living people, injured people and living pets were in each place. So the rescue boats could prioritise their rescues.

There other things about it but I think I've said enough to give you the idea.