• One of the biggest problems too is that in the country we do not even

have a national building code.

HAITI
• Houses are a variation on a local design, except with a new lightweight
structural frame made up of small lengths of timber. They don't look very
different from the outside – low, single- storey dwellings rendered in mud
and stone – but in the event of another earthquake, they will flex rather
than collapse entirely.
Earthquake • The houses are also secured to concrete plinths with steel straps, so they
Earthquake occurred – Jan 12
are less likely to be shaken off the hillsides, It's simple, low-tech stuff,
Magnitude of earthquake – 7.0
and necessarily so, says Cross.
Epicentre – town of Leogane • people with money can build reinforced concrete buildings with steel rods
( ouest )
to strengthen walls and floors. Even these may not meet engineering
Areas affected – Haiti , Dominic
standards to support a load vertically, and they definitely cannot handle
republic
the side-to-side forces of an earthquake.
Casualties – 100,000 to 300,000 • The earthquake, it's much more of a type of lateral loading, [and] for
deaths
lateral loading you need special construction, but in many cases, they are
not designed, not even for current daily loading."
Nearly 250,000 residences and 30,000
commercial buildings were damaged • Haitian buildings traditionally have reinforced concrete roof slabs and
Affected famous buildings – Palace of poorly defined lateral load-resisting systems. The lateral load resisting
justice, the National Assembly, the systems are often based on unreinforced masonry or confined masonry
supreme court and Port-au-Prince • For the new schools, the types of construction were carefully chosen to
cathedral fulfil the requirements of the NBCC and enable the team to use locally
available construction materials.
Before 2010 • For both Prototype concepts the designs included timber truss roof
Mostly they uses timber for structures with well-connected plywood roof diaphragms that attract
construction purposes lower seismic loads because of their small masses and have demonstrated
high resistance to lateral loads.
After 2010 • Where timber construction was employed on the projects a borate
Due to lack of available timber, solution treatment was applied to the timber on site rather than using
modern Haitian architecture has pressure treated lumber. This simple precaution allowed all of the
largely relied on cheap and durable untreated scrap lumber to be used by the communities as fuel for cooking,
concrete to build dwellings, with as is the common practice in Haiti. This avoided having people exposed
thousands of tons imported to the to potentially toxic fumes from burning pressure treated lumber scraps.
island each year. Most of the concrete • Geotechnical conditions vary somewhat from site to site in Haiti. There
used is in the form of blocks which are soils engineers in Haiti but the equipment and expertise to carry out
are often combined with traditional deep soils investigation to quantify a site classification consistent with the
stonework. requirements of the NBCC is not available.

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A1604 COURSE CODE ARC 409