Posted on 05/16/2008 7:10:50 PM PDT by brityank
No matter what the accepted codes were, obviously there's some level of disaster/load whatever beyond which any structure/plan will fail. So there's a trade-off made everywhere as to cost and expected worst-case attack on the design.
That is something I have been thinking all along when criticisms of the building codes etc, and rescue efforts have been made. They are now saying it was an 8.0 earthquake. At some point the intensity of a quake is so big that no structure at all could survive intact. 8.0 is pretty close to that threshold if I'm not mistaken. As you say, there is a trade off point where spending more money for increased quake resistance doesn't make sense. They built to resist up to 5.0. Perhaps too low for this region. But the added cost to build to resist a 7.0 would be very high and an then an 8.0 or higher happens and the economic loss of that high dollar infrastructure makes the disaster even more costly.
Your points about employing the wisdom of standard building codes, developed from decades of experience, is a good one. But I think it is still unknown that shoddy building practices were at fault here for any of the damage.
As for lack of equipment; I saw a lot of it in the pictures I linked to some posts back and in other picture files. Most of it was a lot bigger than any farm/ranch equipment yet it was still dwarfed by the jobs they faced.
lol. No harm no foul. I am used to taking a LOT of heat on some of the daily “China is taking over the world tomorrow” threads.
I’m the contrarian on those threads, as I subscribe to the “million man swim” limitation theory of China’s lack of force projection in naval and air superiority.
Yes they have a huge army, and yes they have made lots of technical progress (By hook or by crook)...and even we have done our best to cede our leads in various bungles here and there.
But China’s scale has massive vulnerabilities as well. They are just as human as we are, and they are constrained by an even worse government than our own, if you can imagine that!
Tragedies like this are a big reminder that choices made by our forefathers matter a great deal today, and we’re more lucky than most around the world for who was making the decisions in America’s past.
I think I'd take your side re Chinese force projection. Under the well crafted facade of unity the PRC tries to sell China is a major basket case.
I did see a couple of quick stories (not in the CCP press) where some of the businesses and folks there who had equipment were on the move long before the PLA was even alerted. However, the scope of the damage, and the vast area they were covering was akin to moving a mountain with a single shovel. The CCP and PLA now have two debacles they have failed their countrymen for, the snowstorm and this; in neither case did they do as much as soon as they should have, or as much as they claimed they were positioned to do. Most of the immediate help came from the stricken area, it was more than a day before those from outside even started to try to get in to assess and help.
I pinged you to a story out of Forbes; one of the points that is made there is the newer generation in China, like us, is using technology to bypass the strict information blockades that the CCP and PLA would dearly love to keep in place. I do believe that socialism will fail, as it did in Russia and the Baltics, once they find how much better freedom and open trade works to their benefit and growth. We, at FR can help in that openness, as long as we allow them the same privilege of supporting their country as we do -- not the government, as my tag-line shows! ;^)
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