On 12/28/2003 6:50 AM after considerable forethought, Tom Sixkiller wrote:

"C J Campbell" wrote in message
...

"Laurence Doering" wrote in message

news:bsjruk$cjsrv$1@ID-|

|
| Damage would be reduced further by the mountainous terrain and the fact
| that most buildings in that part of the world are made of mud brick,
stone,
| or concrete, which would be far more resistant to blast overpressure

than

| wood frame construction.

I have to wonder about that, given the horrendous damage caused by the
recent earthquake in Iran. These structures do not seem to me to be
particularly well built.


The Northridge (CA) earthquake (7.1 ??) Richter killed a "handful" of
people, given the high density of the population. OTOH, _EVERY_ earthquake
in the rest of the world seems to have death tolls in the tens of thousands.

Go figure!


The Northridge quake was 6.7 and killed 57. The difference is the
building codes which also directly affects the building materials. In
Iran, the majority of the buildings are sun baked bricks/blocks, similar
to adobe with no steel reinforcing. Sun baked adobe comes apart during
strong seismic activity and the weight of the collapsing material
results in loss of life. In So Cal, the majority of the unreinforced
brick buildings that survived the Long Beach EQ in 1933 have at least
been tied together at critical locations to reduce the likelihood of
collapse on the occupants. Northridge proved that the retrofitting of
unreinforced brick buildings work. We have since changed our methods and
materials of construction. If we continued to build to the standards of
ancient civilization, we too would have tens of thousands die as a
result of strong seismic activity.

Steve P (aka eq retro dr)
Engineering buildings when not flying