LONDON (AlertNet) - Measures ranging from simply attaching shutters to windows to embedding steel bars in new structures can stop buildings from killing their occupants in natural disasters and should be used more widely, experts say.
Architects and disaster specialists note that poor construction in Haiti was a major reason why so many people - probably more than 300,000 according to the president - died when a 7.0 magnitude earthquake struck the impoverished nation in January.
And in quake-prone Chile where an earthquake and a subsequent tsunami killed around 500 people in February, the government is investigating to what extent rules on fortifying buildings against seismic shocks were followed.
"You don't need to be helpless, you can build safer, you can build better to reduce both the financial cost but of course also the life (cost)," said Margareta Wahlstrom, the U.N. Secretary-General's special representative for disaster risk reduction. "It's not the earthquake that kills people, it's the buildings that collapse in the earthquake."
While some countries put great emphasis on erecting buildings that can survive tropical storms, floods or earthquakes, many others lag far behind, she said in a telephone interview.
Safe construction is not part of international development policies either, Wahlstrom noted, adding she hopes it will now be included after what happened in Haiti and Chile.
A step in that direction is a handbook for reconstruction after natural disasters released by the World Bank on Thursday.
Building well is also important because in the months and years after a disaster, reconstruction is where the biggest sums of international aid money go once emergency needs - for tents, medicines and so on - have been met.
INTELLIGENT DESIGN
Safer buildings alone will not always prevent deaths. Experts say houses should be located away from hazardous areas, where possible. Other key elements to reduce risk are an early warning system, evacuation plans and public education on what to do when a disaster strikes.
But as part of an overall strategy to minimise deaths and destruction, intelligent building design is one of the most straightforward solutions.
For example, shutters on windows will prevent a powerful wind entering the building and lifting it off the ground, and tying the roof to the walls will stop it being blown off.
To protect new buildings against earthquakes, walls can be reinforced with criss-crossing diagonal steel beams or concrete columns. Such - often life-saving - features add less than 10 percent on average to building costs, experts say.
Designs should also take account of what resources are affordable and available locally. For example, in areas where water is short, building concrete houses is not viable as making concrete requires a lot of water.
For a factbox on disaster-proof building techniques, click here.
EASIER DRAWN THAN DONE
While there is no shortage of clever building ideas, implementing them is more complicated, especially in developing countries.
For a start, most people in poor nations live in houses they have built themselves, mostly without knowledge of ways to make them safer or an understanding of structural engineering. Rolling out a nationwide campaign for safer construction of homes may have the greatest impact in the long term, development experts from engineering firm Arup say.
However, organisations involved in post-disaster reconstruction can help by building houses that can be easily replicated by local people. Those willing to build their own homes can be trained how to build with disasters in mind.
That goes for professional builders too, because "poor construction can ruin good design", Arup wrote in a report on reconstruction in Indonesia's Aceh province, which was devastated by the 2004 tsunami.
Training in how to build safely is one of the services to be offered by a new consulting centre in Haiti's capital. Architecture for Humanity, a non-profit design and building group, plans to open the centre in April and hopes to run it for three years.
In countries where corruption is rife, all building work should be monitored closely to ensure no money or materials go astray and construction standards are respected.
LOCAL INVOLVEMENT
Those leading rebuilding efforts after a disaster, including aid agencies, should involve local people in the design and construction as much as possible, experts say.
"The one thing you can do in a disaster is use the reconstruction as a mechanism to create jobs," Cameron Sinclair, co-founder of Architecture for Humanity, told AlertNet.
"Within about a year, after being in those tents so long, the community's number one issue is not housing but jobs," he said in a telephone interview.
Once survivors of a disaster occupy their new house, they may want to change it by knocking down a wall or adding an extension, both of which could weaken the carefully designed building. Arup says organisations should allow for this in their housing designs, and provide training so people know how to adapt or extend their homes safely.
House designs should also suit the beneficiaries' tastes and culture.
Otherwise, as aid group Oxfam put it in a blog, "the charitable gesture by the giver becomes the hat you wouldn't wear in a million years or, in the case of disaster survivors, the house that drives you crazy".
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