On the evening of 16 April my wife and I had just returned from a day at the beach, we were dressing for dinner, when the electricity blinked off, our building began to shudder and shake ferociously, and without thought, as if chased by wild dogs, we dashed outdoors, to find all of our neighbors had done the same, wide-eyed with the panic earthquakes provoke when powerful and prolonged. We were lucky, we didn’t know that during the same 40 seconds during which we managed to dash downstairs and out the front door, hundreds of others had been crushed under collapsing homes and hotels, and thousands had suffered severe injuries.
We reside near the pacific coast of Ecuador, were the population has just lived through a tragic reminder of why construction norms exist. And suffered the consequences of not following them. The 7.9 Muisne earthquake, caused widespread damage across four provinces, with structures hundreds of kilometers from the epicenter collapsing. At least 659 people were killed and 27,732 people injured. Tens of thousands left homeless.
The Cost of No Code Enforcement
Within a few days of the quake, I was working as a volunteer inspector, touring the hundreds of relatively undamaged buildings that still stood, seeing if they were habitable. What I found, horrified me, not because I was seeing tragedy, rescue workers from all over the world were doing this gruesome work, but due to the structural vulnerability of the great majority of the buildings I inspected. Ecuador has a laissez-faire residential code enforcement policy, and the downside to inspection-free, no-hassle homebuilding was painfully obvious.
Most construction I inspected didn’t meet even minimum standards of logic, let alone building code. I saw masonry walls with no rebar, no connection to adjacent walls, roofs or floors. I saw lightweight, wood framed first floors with three stories of unreinforced masonry and concrete built over top.
I felt as if I were touring the future burial ground of all the anxious families that gathered as we looked through the homes, hoping we inspectors would give them the green light to move back in. And for the most part, we did, along with a few quick instructions on what to fix and how. It was not possible to order the demolition of the entire city for substandard construction, although this would have been wise. It became evident that the earthquake had not killed or maimed, but the builders who shortcut, undercut, and cut corners were the real, albeit unwitting murderers of so many.
The Moral Dimension Compliance
The design and construction of residential structures, carries a profound moral responsibility for the survival and wellbeing of those who will occupy them. When you cinch up a gas connection, wire a GFCI, place a foundation bolt in wet concrete, or tighten the nuts on a deck ledger board, you are every bit as responsible for the safety of your clients as an airline pilot for his passengers or a heart surgeon for the patient, doubly so in areas at risk of seismic impacts, storms and flooding.
In Ecuador, construction norms also exist, but due to lack of enforcement, no one I have spoken to has ever seen them. Most actually didn’t know they existed until the president of Ecuador, Rafael Correa, recently ordered all builders of collapsed structures jailed, if their buildings didn’t comply with the NEC (Ecuadorian Construction Norms)-and to an extent, I agree with him.
But on a more positive note, the wakeup call has provoked the same tumultuous reaction we had, here in the USA, after the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, which killed 3000, injured 20,000 and left a quarter-of-a-million homeless. Ecuador is grappling with a revolution in building regulation and enforcement. Just as we have, after each terrible natural and manmade disaster, from the Great Chicago Fire of 1871 through to Hurricane Sandy in 2013, our codes have by and large grown out of and improved on the heels of tragedy.
I am now contributing my limited experience with FEMA inspection and repair methods (I have worked as a FEEMA adjuster), and the earthquake retrofit trade that I learned during ten years of rebuilding in Los Angeles, to help the folks in Ecuador develop prescriptive reconstruction methods. The model codes we have developed in the USA have helped many countries, from Chile to China, jumpstart their own national regulations. We are utilizing them right now to provide guidance in the reconstruction efforts that have already gotten underway in the afflicted areas of Ecuador.
Our much maligned model building codes, and those mossy-backed inspectors that enforce them, give tradesmen a basis of best practice that would otherwise not exist at all. The low mortality rates we suffer in natural disaster nowadays, only two deaths in the 6.6 magnitude San Simeon quake of 2003, represent a moral testament to the value of prescriptive engineering and its enforcement. Those code comities, plan reviewers, and the pesky inspectors protect you and your business by ensuring we have rules to follow, and we follow those rules. So next time your building inspector walks up to the jobsite, shake his hand and say thank you.
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Falling debris kills in a quake, just as well as collapsing buildings will.
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The epicenter of the earthquake was off the coast of northwest Ecuador, need the city of Esmeralda, where I am working, and the fishing town of Muisne.
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The structures are often very humble, but even the least of homes must be constructed safely.
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The 7.8 magnitude thrust had enough power to knock bridges down hundreds of kilometers away, as this overpas that fell with deadly consecuences in Guayaquil.
View Comments
Fernando,
Thanks very much for this important blog. My son Moses is now in Ecuador -- he is in the Peace Corps, teaching English at a high school in Azogues. During the earthquake, he was far away from the epicenter, and there weren't any deaths in Azogues. (A later earthquake broke some windows at the school where he is teaching, though.) Our thoughts and prayers are with the people of Ecuador at this difficult time.
I worked for more than a year in Armenia helping with earthquake reconstruction after that country's 1988 earthquake, and the recent earthquake in Ecuador brought back a lot of memories.
So, I agree with you: let's all remember to tighten those nuts, and remember why we need building codes.
Martin Holladay
Senior editor, Green Building Advisor
Outstanding post.
Of course, the arrival of inspectors at your job sites is always a little nervous making. You worry that they might cause you extra work (from time to time they have on my jobs). But those guys--or at least those who actually do their jobs and actually inspect--are your allies. They save you making mistakes and committing oversights which can hurt or kill people, not to mention cost you a bundle.
From time to time, her in earthquake country, I feel compelled to approach a job site where obviously shoddy work is going forward without a permit or inspections and tell the builder, get a permit or I will call the building department.
The reaction is, of course, rage, name calling, tantrums, petulance, etc.
My response is a question: "What would you do if you saw a mugging on a public street or in a public park? Walk away (as certain New Yorkers were famous for doing some years ago)?"
My follow up is: "What's going on here is a slow motion mugging. Your work is not up to the normal standard of care. It violates building norms and codes. Eventually it is going to hurt of kill someone. I don't walk past muggings. Get a permit. Now."
Recently I found out that a neighbor who fancied himself a builder had done un-permited wiring in two houses he was selling. I wrote a letter to the realtor demanding he inform potential buyers of the illegal wiring and its potential danger. He was outraged at my endangering his commission, but had no choice but to make the disclosure.
After the houses were sold, a short in the illegal wiring -- at a splice between 20 amp romex and knob and tube -- started a fire in one of the houses (fortunately, the fire was noticed and extinguished before much of the house burned). At the other house the new owners had the wiring inspected by a good electrician. He found roughly 30 of the illegal splices and largely rewired the house. That house had been purchased by a young couple with two small children. Failing to report that slow motion mugging would have put their lives in danger.
Yeah, inspections matter. Failure to build according to code, and making sure that you have by getting inspections and respecting your inspectors, is an ethical failure. A friend of mine once said, "when you don't have building codes you get Haiti." Yes. And Ecuador.
Thanks for your forceful reminder, Fernando.