Canadian engineers are offering to help Haiti ensure its homes, hospitals and schools don't collapse when the next major earthquake strikes.
"We build cities and we rebuilt cities and that expertise is a resource and skill we would like to bring to Haiti," says Douglas Salloum, executive director of the 4,000-member Canadian Society for Civil Engineering.
"We represent people with literally hundreds of years of experience," says Salloum, who has written to Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon, offering to address the "critical need" for improved construction standards in Haiti. "This is absolutely necessary to avoid loss of life from future earthquakes and hurricanes."
Last month's quake in Haiti killed as many as 300,000 people as homes, schools, churches, hotels and offices collapsed and left some 1.5 million people homeless.
Seismic experts and engineers say steps must be taken now to ensure new homes and building are better constructed to withstand the violent shaking and tremors caused when geological plates jolt past each other.
"Other countries have been rebuilt without improving their standards and we wouldn't want that to happen in Haiti," says Salloum, who hopes to see building standards on the agenda at next month's international meeting to discuss Haiti's multibillion-dollar relief effort.
Seismologist Roger Bilham of the University of Colorado last week called on the United Nations to act to stop construction of flimsy buildings that he describes as "weapons of mass destruction" in areas prone to violent tremors. Not only are better building codes and training needed, Bilham said, but also enforcement programs to stamp out the "corruption and bribery" that often sees builders in developing countries cut corners.
Salloum concurs. "There is no point in rebuilding without new standards. We'd just be creating death traps."
He says the Canadian engineering society would like to work with the Haitian government, engineers and construction industry to develop standards and a system to see them implemented and enforced. The engineering society, which is based in Montreal, is already building bridges with civil engineers in the Canadian Haitian community.
The society wrote to Cannon in early February, offering its services and Salloum said he is hoping to meet with government officials in Ottawa next week.
He says the society could pull together an engineering team and come up with a detailed strategy within a couple for months. He says the society is willing to commit for the long haul and help the Haitians ensure new standards are put to work.
Bilham, who has visited Haiti since the quake, describes the capital of Port-au-Prince as a "nightmare of diabolical proportions" for engineers.
The "mangled ruins" reveal the buildings had been "doomed" during construction.
"Every possible mistake was evident: brittle steel, coarse non-angular aggregate, weak cement mixed with dirty or salty sand and the widespread termination of steel reinforcement rods at the joints between columns and floors of buildings where earthquake stresses are highest."
"The survival of top-heavy water towers amid areas of pancaked ruins" illustrates the disaster "could have been averted had sound construction practices been adhered to," says Bilham. He says the UN needs to step in because many tremor-prone regions of the world permit substandard building practices.
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