After the disaster News Venezuela’s earthquakes — magnitude 7.2 and 7.5 tremors have left buildings in ruins, at least 164 dead, more than 25,000 people reported missing and rescue workers searching for survivors under the rubble — it’s important to ask what separates a natural disaster from a humanitarian disaster. While earthquakes themselves cannot be prevented, the devastation they cause can often be reduced through thoughtful design, strict regulations, and decades of accumulated engineering knowledge.
Few countries illustrate this better than Japan. On New Year’s Day 2024, pilgrims, temple-goers and visitors alike in central Japan were shaken by a 7.5-magnitude earthquake on the Noto Peninsula in western Ishikawa Prefecture. the countryThe first tsunami warning since the devastating Tohoku disaster of 2011. And despite being one of the country’s strongest earthquakes in decades, the death toll was far lower than similarly powerful earthquakes elsewhere in the world. Much of that resilience can be attributed to Japan’s strict building standards and its determination to turn every earthquake event into a lesson for building more safely in the future.
Despite the natural disaster earthquake statistics, however, the reported casualties are much lower than comparable examples around the world such as TurkeyA 7.8-magnitude earthquake struck in February 2023, killing more than 50,000 people. Most of it is due to Japan Architecture. In preparation for frequent earthquakes in the nation, where four tectonic plates meet, Japan has adjusted and strictly enforces its standards for structural engineering, turning past disasters into hard lessons for a safer future.
Aerial view of Tokyo cityscape with Mount Fuji in Japan.Photo: Getty Images
These changes first began a century ago, when a 7.9-magnitude earthquake in Yokohama, Japan, killed 140,000 people and collapsed millions of structures in 1923. Because many of Japan’s older buildings are made of wood, they are not equipped to handle frequent earthquakes as much as a more unpleasant structure can. After the disaster, the nation introduced seismic standards into its building codes, focusing specifically on strengthening new and existing wood and concrete construction in urban areas. Since then, several updates to these laws now specify that all buildings in Japan must not collapse during an earthquake of any force, regardless of how much damage they have sustained during the earthquake. Architects and engineers can achieve this life-saving stability by using both reinforcing and isolating techniques.
California-based structural engineer Krista Luza describes the Cadillac of performance options when it comes to buildings. NPRThere are seismic dampers and base isolation. The former are located between the columns and beams of each floor of the building and use piston heads in cylinders of silicone oil to transfer vibrations to the fluid instead of the structure during an earthquake. The latter come in many forms and at many prices, from rubber pads installed on a building’s foundation to act as vibration absorbers to decoupling the entire structure from its foundation and setting it on flexible pads so that when the ground shakes, the architecture remains intact and stable.
