Engineer Recounts Haitian Earthquake Aftermath Experience
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| Audience/Grade: | College Freshman - Continuing Education |
| Discipline(s): |
Architectural Engineering Civil Engineering Construction Engineering Engineering Ethics Engineering Mechanics Geological Engineering |
| Learning Resource Type: | Reference - Article/Document |
| Media Type: | WWW |
| Author(s): |
Mollie Bloudoff-Indelicato
Organization: Daily Californian |
| Description: | News article about engineers' review of construction failures that contributed to the damage and loss of life after Haiti's 7.0 magnitude earthquake in January 2010. Excerpt: "Two weeks after the Haiti earthquake, Eduardo Fierro, president of Bertero, Fierro, Perry, Engineering, Inc., brought accounts of the destruction back to UC Berkeley, attributing much of the structural damage to a lack of education and sound infrastructure. Fierro gave a lecture on campus Tuesday afternoon detailing his experiences in the aftermath of the Haitian earthquake. "Many of the buildings were broken down ..." he said. "The smell was getting to be really bad from decaying bodies ... The part that really got to me was that humans were in the street, bloated, like animals." Fierro, a UC Berkeley graduate, and four other researchers traveled to Haiti, staying there for a week with funding from the campus-based Pacific Earthquake Engineering Research Center. The purpose of the reconnaissance mission was to learn from the structural mistakes in order to prevent future catastrophes. "You can learn what worked and what didn't work," he said. Fierro said the combination of lack of attention to detail, poor building materials, lack of reinforcement and the density of construction are what brought down the Haitian capitol of Port-Au-Prince. In some cases people built on soft soil, using mud and sand for construction." |
| Rating: | No Rating |
| Related Resources | |
| Keywords: | Haiti earthquake, earthquakes, seismic construction |
| Usage Tip | |
| Related ABET Criteria: |
(b) Design and conduct experiments, analyze and interpret data (c) Design a system, component, or process (f) Understand professional and ethical responsibility (h) Understand global, economic, environmental, and societal context |
| Use of Resource: | The Haiti earthquake opens up learning opportunities in engineering ethics and community-based service learning. |
| Difficulty: | Easy |
| Interactivity Level: | Low |
| Version Info | |
| Publication Date: | 2010 |
| Platform/Format: | WWW |
| Cost: | Free |
| Download URL: | http://www.dailycal... |
| Metadata: | IEEE LOM Record |
| Collection: |
NEEDS
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