Monthly Archives: February 2011

Christchurch, N.Z. – varying accounts of damage ratios and outcomes

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A  high percentage of damaged buildings, many that are built in the Gothic Revival style and considered landmarks, in the central city cannot be repaired.  The sizable amount of rebuilding will require closing many businesses and the cathedral until they can have their structures rebuilt.

(1) Engineers reveal a THIRD of Christchurch’s buildings have to be demolished and city centre could be no go area for months
February 27,2011

Engineers have said that at least a third of Christchurch’s buildings must be demolished and rebuilt after the devastating earthquake on Tuesday.

The damage to the decimated centre of the city could mean it was completely unusable for months to come as the death toll reached 147 today.

People held open-air church services on church lawns today to pray for the dead and missing after the 6.3-magnitude quake.

(2) These facts don’t compute: On Feb. 27, ChannelNewsAsia, N.Z. reports that a former N.Z. Prime Minister compares earthquake outcome in N.Z. with that of Haiti. That seems odd to me since the no. of deaths in Haiti were about a thousand times greater than N.Z. and the ratio of impact — death and injury counts and building loss –are not as severe as Haiti.  Excerpts from article below:

The scale of devastation in quake-hit Christchurch is comparable with the destruction wreaked in the 2010 Haiti earthquake, New Zealand’s former premier Helen Clark said on Monday, as rescuers prepared for the final death toll to rise above 200.  The stark assessment came with much of the city lying in ruins after last Tuesday’s 6.3-magnitude quake caused widespread death and destruction, toppling buildings and tearing up roads.

“The building damage I’ve seen compared with Haiti,” Clark, who now heads the United Nations Development Programme, told Radio New Zealand on Monday, referring to the massive quake which killed at least 220,000 in the Caribbean island in January last year.

“Let there be no mistake, New Zealand has suffered a tragedy of monumental proportions and it’s going to require every ounce of recovery in this country to push through from this,” she added.

The death toll in Christchurch reached 147 late Sunday but police fear more than 50 still listed as “unaccounted for” lie dead in the rubble.

Regarding the ratio of deaths from the earthquake relative to the total population, for Haiti the no. is 8% and for Chile and NewZealand the no. is less than 1%.

(3) A source of good, basic information: see the MCEER site ( SUNY/Buffalo Earthquake Center) for an excellent, chronological listing of articles and documents.

(4) Reuters, on Feb. 28th, writes that combined cost of the two biggest quakes will be about $20B.

Christchurch, N.Z. Earthquake – returning and rebuilding decisions

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Christchurch Earthquake

Image by Cafe Cecil via Flickr

In The Guardian, Feb. 25, some of the pros and cons about rebuilding are examined. Two significant comments:

Andrew King, an engineer at the Institute of Geological and Nuclear Sciences, said the city and its surroundings could be rebuilt in such a way that structures “can remain intact as the ground deforms around them”. The only question was whether the resources would be made available.

Gerry Brownlee, who has been appointed earthquake recovery minister, put on a brave face, rejecting suggestions that the cost of rebuilding could be economically crippling for the country. “New Zealand is one of the most insured countries in the world,” he said. “There is going to be a massive influx of capital into this country and this city.”

It is understandable that two major earthquakes, and perhaps thousands of smaller aftershocks, in the past 5 months have New Zealanders questioning a return to the city and wondering if they will be able to restore normalcy to their daily lives.

More on the economic costs and impacts, in the Christian Science Monitor.  This article estimates total damage at $12B.

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Canterbury, N.Z. Earthquake — Updates

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Useful map showing the epicenter of the first earthquake (Sept. 2010) and the largest aftershock. ( Thanks to Eric Holderman for the location.)

Economic Aspects:

News from Bloomberg’s business news site about the costs of the earthquake, to N.Z. and to the reinsurance industry. (Feb. 24, 2011)

Wikipedia has a useful initial account of the earthquake. What follows is their account of some of the economic ramifications of the quake:

New Zealand Finance Minister Bill English advised that the effects of the 2011 quake were likely to be more costly than the September 2010 quake. His advice was that the 2011 Earthquake was a “new event” and that reinsurance cover was already in place after the previous 2010 event. New Zealand’s Earthquake Commission (EQC), a government organisation, levies policyholders to cover a major part of the earthquake risk. The EQC further limits its own risk by taking out cover with a number of large reinsurance companies, for example Munich Re. The EQC pays out the first NZ$1.5 billion in claims, and the reinsurance companies are liable for all amounts between NZ$1.5 billion and NZ$4.0 billion. The EQC must cover all amounts above NZ$4.0 billion.

EQC cover entitles the holder to up to NZ$100,000 plus tax (GST) for each dwelling, with any further amount above that being paid by the policyholder’s insurance company. For personal effects, EQC pays out the first NZ$20,000 plus tax. The EQC covers only domestic assets and does not provide cover for businesses.

Claims from the 2010 shock were estimated at NZ$2.75–3.5 billion. Prior to the 2010 quake, the EQC had a fund of NZ$5.6 billion, with just over NZ$4 billion left prior to the 2011 quake, after taking off the NZ$1.5 billion cost. The EQC does not cover commercial buildings, whose owners have to arrange cover with private insurers.

I am trying to figure out why the physical damage was so great from the 6.3 aftershock. Perhaps a sizable no. of structures and infrastructure were weaken during the initial quake  (magnitude 7.1) last Sept. and then failed during the major aftershock.  I would welcome some input on this question.

Additional Information from Related Articles:

Huge Aftershock in NZ Causes Deaths and More Destruction

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Christchurch City (New Zealand) from the Port ...

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Newest info from the NZ Herald about the likelihood of more deaths, given the fact that many people are still trapped in collapsed buildings.

Earlier account from the L.A. Times of a powerful aftershock in Christchurch, N.Z. yesterday.The initial earthquake in Sept. 2010 was a 7.1 magnitude and this aftershock was a 6.3.  There have been many aftershocks, but none as damaging as this one.

After the powerful aftershock 65 people died, although the initial earthquake did not cause any deaths.  A sad reminder that after a major earthquake, there may be aftershocks for years.  They can cause deaths and injuries and always cause distress to residents.

Location and timing are identified as key variables for this major aftershock, according to Andrew Rivkin’s blog for the NY Times.

VIDEO:

See this video provided by the Weather Channel; Feb. 22. It comes close to feeling like the actual experience.

RELATED  ARTICLES:

Risk Addiction – podcast of Naomi Klein’s TED talk

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Naomi Klein beantwortet eine Frage aus dem Pub...

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This is the first time I have recommended a video clip, but do check out Naomi Klein’s TED talk on the topic of Risk Addiction. In her talk she covers the BP Oil Spill and climate change, among other matters, and she asks what makes our culture to prone to reckless high-stakes gambles.

Klein is the author of a book titled Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism (2008). See review of this book in JHSEM.

See an additional commentary on the same topic by Naomi Klein, available on CNN, dated Feb. 20, 2011.

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Recovery After a Political Revolution – Tunisia

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Recovery from a political revolution seems to have a lot of similarities to recovery after a major disaster.  But, two obvious differences are there is less physical destruction, and the level of trust in government is a lot lower.  see For Tunisia, Revolution Was the Easy Part; NY Times, February 13, 2011

In cafes and on street corners, Tunisians say they are proud that their uprising against decades of authoritarian rule inspired protests in Egypt and elsewhere across the Arab world. But many also say they are realizing that bringing down the dictator may have been the easy part.  With restrictions on the media lifted and freedom of speech flourishing, years of bottled-up demands over salaries, working conditions and other rights have erupted.

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European Union – excellent report and maps of impacts of recent natural and tech. disasters

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Mapping the impacts of natural hazards and technological accidents in Europe

The report assesses the occurrence and impacts of disasters and the underlying hazards such as storms, extreme temperature events, forest fires, water scarcity and droughts, floods, snow avalanches, landslides, earthquakes, volcanoes and technological accidents in Europe for the period 1998-2009. Technical report No 13/2010; published: 12 Jan 2011. It is available in both high and low resolution — note the former takes forever to download, so I linked to the low res. version.
This is an impressive amount of work.  It would be nice if we had a counterpart report for such info in the U.S.
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FEMA Is Not Learning From History — what a surprise!

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Washington, DC, April 5, 2005 -- The Departmen...

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I have to admit it is fun saying ” I told you so.”  When I say it, no one pays much attention; but now that FEMA’s Inspector General has addressed the problem maybe people will think about it. The new report, issued today,  is titled Lack of After-Action Reviews Hurts FEMA Knowledge Base. The specifics of the report are OIG-11-32, dated January 2011.

As noted in the publication HSToday, FEMA has not been conducting after-action reviews for all disasters, contrary to the agency’s policy,.

In addition, FEMA has been unable to distribute previously gathered information on lessons learned and best practices due to technology failures and limitations, discovered the IG report, FEMA’s Progress in Implementing the Remedial Action Management Program.”

“FEMA stood up its Remedial Action Management Program in July 2003 to identify lessons learned and best practices for dealing with disaster response and recovery operations. The program aims to identify problems and limitations encountered by FEMA in response to a natural disaster or terrorist incident and record information on overcoming those challenges in a database for FEMA personnel to explore. However, FEMA personnel have not consistently produced this information after every disaster, as required by the policies of the RAMP. As such, FEMA personnel have lost opportunities to share knowledge with their colleagues….” “Failing to conduct after-action reviews limits the lessons learned and best practices generated by the agency, preventing FEMA personnel from learning from the experiences of their colleagues” “As a result, the vast majority of FEMA personnel cannot access historical data on lessons learned and best practices.” [Their emphasis.]

In my opinion the investigation did not go far enough. Although the RAMP program is important, I suggest there are many broader concerns about failure to read and learn from historic disasters. The lack of information about major and catastrophic disaster events that have happened in past decades is a glaring omission, in my view. From 30+ years of experience, I would note that some of the tasks that FEMA has failed to do for many years are: prepare candid and actionable after-action reports, conduct independent field investigations after a major disaster, and document case studies.  Additionally, efforts to store, analyze, synthesize, and then share findings have been inadequate. Regarding the recovery phase, for example, neither a body of theory nor a knowledge base exists presently. FEMA is more than 30 years old. It is time to deal with these matters.

For many years, I have been working on various charts, reports, and books that deal with the need to know the history of emergency management and to learn from it. I expect to have more to say on this topic later.  Your comments are invited.

Queensland, Australia – new recovery organization created

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Queensland, Australia

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Yesterday I read that about 70% of the entire population of Queensland, Australia has been affected by the recent floods and cyclone.  Today in the Wall St. Journal that indicate that a new organization has been created to deal with the recovery process.  This article is a bit brief, but I expect more details will be known in the coming days.

One more article from the Adelaide newspaper, Feb. 7.  The issues surely do sound familiar – how to spend large amounts of money efficiently and effectively……