--- In papercreters@yahoogroups.com, "TerryW" <blazingsaddles@...> wrote:
>
> Hi, I'm still around, and I was just wondering about the Haiti earthquake, seeing all those concrete buildings just collapse like they did.
>
> Anyone have some ideas on why they collapsed, was the quake just that strong or the buildings that weak?
>
> I'm wondering how a papercrete building would hold up in a big quake.
>
> Terry in AZ
>
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Newscasters have mentioned more than once in the last couple of days that building code enforcement is very lax in Haiti. In the pictures of the devastation, steel reinforcement (rebar) seems to be largely absent. Just an observation.
So, you ask how a papercrete building would hold up in a quake? The answer is going to depend on how well it was built. Some sort of reinforcement would seem to me to be required. As I recall some construction guides recommend pounding vertical rebar down through multiple layers of papercrete blocks during wall assembly.
Five or six years ago I happened across a web site about preventing earthquake deaths in third world countries. The focus of the web site was that so many poor people live in adobe buildings that crumble and collapse in a quake, causing enormous number of fatalities. They were researching a way to retrofit adobe block buildings to improve survivability.
The design they came up with was to apply a layer of heavy welded wire fence at the corners and across the top of the walls, inside and out. The layers are held in place by wires run thru the walls and wrapped onto the welded wire. Then the entire structure is coated with a layer of ferrocement, inside and out.
I am no structural engineer, but my intuitive building sense thinks this concept could be applied to papercrete buildings.
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