BOGOTA (AlertNet) - Countless lives could be saved in the future if 10 percent of relief aid to Haiti is spent on building earthquake- and hurricane-resistant schools, hospitals and houses for the one million left homeless by last month's earthquake, experts say.
"We hope that 10 percent of aid will focus on reducing HaitiÂ?s vulnerability to disasters," Margareta Wahlstrom, the U.N. Secretary-General special representative for disaster risk reduction, told AlertNet. "This requires a political statement of commitment from the aid agencies and Haitian government."
It is a recommendation shared by other agencies.
"If we had 25 years until the next big earthquake in Haiti, which is reasonable to assume looking at the history, quake-resistant buildings could save around 100,000 lives," said Brian Tucker, a leading expert on earthquake risk reduction and head of GeoHazards International, a U.S.-based non-profit organisation that works to reduce the impact of earthquakes.
He added that 10 percent of donor funds should be spent on preparing for and mitigating the impact of earthquakes.
Many experts say the high death toll of the Jan. 12 earthquake, which claimed the lives of nearly 217,500 people according to the latest government figures, was largely preventable because earthquakes kill and injure people only if they cause buildings to collapse.
"The lethality of an earthquake comes from poor construction, not from the shaking of an earthquake," Tucker said.
Before the quake Haiti's sprawling capital Port-au-Prince, which bore the brunt of the earthquake, was littered with shoddy constructions. Many schools and homes had brittle walls and unreinforced masonry, not least due to poor building standards and almost non-existent building regulations.
As a result, the 7.0-magnitude quake shattered around 100,000 of the capital's buildings, including an estimated 80 percent of schools, the main prison, the presidential palace and the U.N. compound.
But the relief community sees in the destruction a key opportunity to build back better and in accordance with quake-resistant building codes. The rebuilding of Port-au-Prince and the surrounding areas devastated by the catastrophe is estimated to take at least 10 years and cost some $14 billion, according to the Inter-American Development Bank.
SAFER BUILDINGS
While no structure is 100 percent quake-proof, engineers say, buildings can be made more rigid to help them withstand an earthquake's rocking forces. At the very least, buildings can be built to keep standing for longer, giving occupants potentially life-saving seconds to flee to safety.
Adding earthquake-resistant features, such as reinforced concrete, which involves embedding steel rods or bars into concrete, strong columns, and reinforcing walls with diagonal steel beams, along with bolting buildings to their foundations, can all make buildings more robust.
"Building a home, a box, where all the elements of the box are connected and tied together with bolts and steel mesh in corners is one guiding principle in making buildings safer," said Tucker.
Such features are relatively cheap, experts say, and add less than 10 percent on average to building costs.
"The difference in cost between a building that is safe and one that is not safe is not that big," said United Nations' Wahlstrom. "It can be as little as 3 to 4 percent higher when building a safe school, and about a 5 to 10 per cent increase when building a hospital."
Deciding where to rebuild in Haiti is perhaps just as important as how buildings are built, the United Nations says.
Building on steep slopes and on soft soil foundations increases the chance of buildings sinking or tipping over during an earthquake.
However, in a country where corruption is rife, particularly in the building sector, the possible embezzlement of billions of dollars of aid earmarked for Haiti's reconstruction is a major concern, the United Nations says. It says aid must be coordinated and monitored closely to ensure corruption does not undermine reconstruction efforts.
"Corruption is not just about money going astray but includes weakening building materials by mixing sand with cement," said Wahlstrom. "There are risks all through the system, especially when lots of contractors are employed."
The Haiti quake serves as a stark warning to other major cities in the region built near fault lines, with many buildings that do not comply with quake-resistant design codes, such as in Quito, Lima, Caracas, Bogota.
"The most disturbing thing about Haiti is that it's an example of what we'll see in the future," said Tucker.
"Increasing numbers of people living in cities in developing worlds and the decreasing quality of buildings means many hundreds of thousands of lives will be lost in future earthquakes."
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