Degenkolb Reconnaissance Team in Haiti – Day 6
Day 6
In the morning, we reviewed some more traditional “gingerbread” colombage construction homes – there was a cluster of these homes in the Bois Verna area of Port Au Prince. As observed previously, these structures generally performed very well. Most of the problems in these buildings were related to poorly constructed concrete/masonry porticos that appear to have been added at a later date. A couple of the homes were seriously deteriorated due to wood rot and general age-related decay, although the earthquake damage was very minor – some movement of concrete/CMU walls – strictly “area closed” stuff. A challenging exercise for the MTPTC / UNOPS inspectors doing the ongoing building tagging here – it is difficult to put a green tag on a potentially hazardous condition just because it was not caused by the earthquake.
A potentially dangerous building, but not because of the earthquake. (above)
This afternoon we met with Ian Jones, Construction Manager for Digicel. Ian was generous with both his time and willingness to share information, a welcome experience compared to the usual difficulty in obtaining information on buildings in the US. We looked around their headquarters building (Photo 2), which did very well, and discussed their short and long term post earthquake response and recovery process. They have done an excellent job so far, as evidenced by their rapid recovery (2-3 days) and the quality of the local cell service. This far exceeds anything provided by that large phone company in San Francisco, which actually maybe isn’t saying very much – suffice to say it’s really good.
Digicel building – a successful engineered structure. (above)
View from top of Digicel Building. (above)
After meeting Ian, we did a couple of damage surveys along Route de Delmas. We selected this area because Immersive Media provided high quality “street view” imagery of these locations shortly after the earthquake (http://www.immersivemedia.com/haiti/map/index.html). We will be able to compare our damage survey with that performed by remote engineers using this imagery, and also with that performed by volunteers using only aerial and satellite imagery. This will provide a comparison of three potential methods of remote assessment.
Confirming photo and aerial recon work – see if you can spot the tag (above)
Tonight we ventured out for a short walk after dark. There is no power, and only patchy lighting from generators etc. The nearby tent camp was busy with people walking around, and a generally pleasant atmosphere. It felt relatively safe although we were guarded and did not venture far. We got back to the hotel and as I write this the heavens opened dumping water everywhere for about 30 minutes. I can’t imagine how miserable it would be dealing with that on a regular basis – in any environment, let alone here. Rain this intense would flood everything – bringing with it the dirt and debris and who knows what else…
It is vital that as many buildings as possible are returned to service as quickly as possible. The supply of functional building stock, for both housing and business, is vital to the post-earthquake recovery here. MTPTC / UNOPS and organizations like AIDG and other NGO’s are busy evaluating buildings as quickly as possible – several thousand a day with 30%-40% of these receiving ATC-20 green tags. However, the citizens of Port-au-Prince and surrounds also seek assurance that these buildings are safe to occupy before they are willing to return full-time. In many cases, the assurance they seek goes beyond what ATC-20 was intended to provide. They seek confirmation that their building meets some standard of safety such that it will not collapse or be excessively damaged in the next earthquake. The temptation is for ATC-20 inspectors to introduce some strengthening requirements into the tagging process by use of the yellow/red tags, as opposed to the “area closed” option. This trap should be avoided if at all possible, as the immediate need for shelter governs.
Providing the safety assurance that people seek – at least for civic structures such as schools and hospitals – requires use of an seismic evaluation standard such as ASCE-31, and some companion strengthening standard. ASCE-41 is probably too complex, something direct and prescriptive would be best. The ASCE-31 procedures would require tailoring for the conditions and construction type here, but this could be done relatively easily. Prescriptive design/rehabilitation documents for confined and infill masonry already exist and are being tailored for local construction by ad hoc and non-profit organizations like Haiti Rewired (http://haitirewired.wired.com) and Build Change (http://www.buildchange.org/). These documents may need to be expanded slightly beyond the original construction manual intent to fulfill the need for a prescriptive strengthening standard.
Red tagged building that can be easily saved (above)
We have heard that all construction is presently officially halted. At least one school construction site we visited was paused for this reason. If true, there is an urgent need for emergency regulations to address some of the critical deficiencies so that the official reconstruction process can continue as quickly as possible.
Thinking for a moment beyond the immediate tragedy of this earthquake, we hope that UNOPS will preserve the process they have created here so that it can be rapidly deployed in the next major earthquake – which may be just around the corner…..
