Quakes: Call on Turks and on Greeks

The "art" of photography was invented in 1826. The use of steel-reinforced concrete started around 1876. 

 

So, for 135 years, from 1876 to this day (2011), it has been possible to have photos of steel-reinforced concrete buildings destroyed by quakes. Newspaper archives, worldwide, are full of innumerable photos of multistory steel-reinforced concrete buildings in which their occupants were crashed to death, in the most agonizing way, when the buildings collapsed, during an earthquake. 

 

If observers from another planet could view the material and social changes that appeared on the face of the earth during the last one hundred years, they would conclude that one of the most important factors for the existing material and social reality on the planet has been the use of steel-reinforced concrete.

 

The ease and speed with which humans can make a concrete building frame has enabled them to construct multi-story buildings in infinite numbers. From the moment of the arrival of this type of building, life changed for the mass of twentieth century men and women. This kind of building allowed the state to cram a great part of the population into miserable apartments in multi-story concrete buildings. The social, political, psychopathological, and even anthropological aspects of the problem of cramming millions in these "buildings-machines" has yet to be seriously addressed.

 

This social problem of the multi-story apartment building is magnified to a fatal degree at those parts of the Earth which are earthquake-prone.  

 

Concrete is an intrinsically brittle material, even when reinforced with steel. (Chalk is another brittle material). A multistory concrete building cannot survive a big earthquake, if hit directly by the earthquake. The damage from a quake to a building is site specific. A building can remain intact, while another one, even a few feet away, can be destroyed completely. 

 

Naturally, it is reasonable to ask: who is responsible for the proliferation of the concrete multi-story apartment building? As already mentioned, it is the state. Not only because it crams the masses, like sardines, in these "buildings-machines", but because, with the help of its technical "commissars", the engineers, it permits and promotes the construction of these "death-traps", in earthquake-prone areas. 

 

So, we reach to the, rather, strange conclusion that the thousands of deaths caused by quakes is a political problem!

 

Among the people that helped the state to propagate or use this multi-story-building "solution" to the problem of housing ordinary people, a prominent place is held by Le Corbusier (1887-1965). Le Corbusier was born in Switzerland and at the age of 43 he became a French citizen. He was quite "enamored" to the Nazis, and he was an admirer of Henry Ford and the...General Motors!

 

His contribution to humanity: part of the misery that the extraterrestrial man observed during his trip on the surface of the earth.

 

Unfortunately, this contribution to misery and quake-induced deaths has not been adequately recognized, if at all, by historians, engineers, and intellectuals. 

 

How could, a rather not very competent architect, create such "havoc", almost single-handed?

 

My estimate: The cause is a strange tendency of humans, especially of ladies, to feel that it is de rigueur to be modern, to follow the fashion, etc. [Whether this tendency is innate or acquired, does not matter. What matters, is that it is so prevalent]. Le Corbusier and his creations were the epitome of...modernity. Maybe, that was why Le Corbusier became a French citizen; to be at the center of modernity, fashion, etc.

 

Aside from this rather droll, yet valid, explanation, there is a more sinister one: the greed of the Portland cement industry and the automobile industry in the "democratic" nations and authoritarianism in the non-democratic nations (the Soviets, Hitler, etc). 

 

Let us take the case of Greece:

 

Around 79 years ago, between 1932 and 1933, what happened at the "Exarchia Square" in Athens helped decide the fate of the city concerning its buildings and consequently helped decide the way of the life of its inhabitants.

 

In 1932 the construction of one of the first steel-reinforced concrete multi-story buildings, designed by a young Greek architect, started to take place at the north-eastern corner of the "Exarchia Square".

 

[Parenthesis: "The Athens neighborhood of 'Exarchia' is considered the scene of the anarchic scene in Greece (today). The core of the neighborhood is a tiny triangular park (the 'Exarchia Square') with its longest side measuring around 150 feet. The police raid Exarchia regularly." (This from my ZNet Commentary, of January 30, 2009). 

 

In 1932, the Exarchia area was an upper middle-class place with only one-story or at most two-storey houses, as was all of Athens. Therefore, the multi-story building at the square was quite a sensation. End of the parenthesis.]

 

Before the new multi-story building at Exarchia was completed Le Corbusier visited the place and after congratulating the Greek architect, he scrawled the words "C' est tres beau" (It is very beautiful) on a wall at the entrance of the unfinished building. The words stayed there on the wall for decades, to commemorate the approval of the "great" man. Le Corbusier was 45 years old at the time and already a French citizen. 

 

Then to crown this "artistic" masterpiece the architect invited a friend of his, a painter, to choose the color of the outer surface of the building. The painter chose a very dark blue color, which turned the edifice into a legendary "monument" for modern Athens: the "Blue Apartment Building", as it is called to this day. Unfortunately, the dark color turned the building into an "oven" during the scorching Athenian summers, so it was painted with a lighter blue color, in later years. 

 

The Greek "Blue Apartment Building" was not a blessed event for the Greeks only, similar happy events took place all over the planet. Hitler, Stalin, et al, were in line waiting to cram their lucky citizens into the "machines". 

 

So, the "Blue Apartment Building" has been replicated in Athens and the rest of Greece, ad nauseam, to this day, resulting in a monstrous and, more importantly, a dangerous city, quakewise.

 

Unfortunately for the Greek people, it so happened that the "gift" of Le Corbusier to the state, the multi-story concrete buildings (the "buildings-machines") was also a "gift" to the US Empire as an instrument of domination. During the last half of the 1940s in Greece, the US "managed" what is usually referred to as the Greek "civil war"; the nationalist army, armed and managed by the US, fought the revolted Greek communists. Using Greece as a proving ground, the US initiated the "Phoenix" philosophy: to defeat a revolution you empty the villages where the revolutionaries get their supplies. So, a part of the population of northern Greece was forced to inundate Athens and start building the monster that exists today in Athens; tens of thousands of Le Corbusier "creations".

 

[Note: The next case of application of the "Phoenix Program" was in Vietnam. Unfortunately, there, part of the population of the villages were executed by the CIA.]

 

There is a strange and mostly ignored case, which could have been a "counter argument" to the Le Corbusier "curse", at least in later years, and that is the case of Christopher Alexander, Professor of architecture at Berkeley. But this is not the place to expand on this matter.

 

Going back to quakes, let us go a bit deeper. Is the expression "quake-prone", mentioned previously, completely realistic?

 

Here are two (rather) random "samples" of the quakes, above a magnitude of 2.5 Richter(R) for the US and adjacent areas, and above 4.5 for the rest of the world, that took place over the entire planet for two separate weeks, as recorded by the United States Geological Survey (USGS):

 

Quakes worldwide:

 

I. From October 17 to October 24, 2011:

 

- Total number of quakes: 229

 

- Number of quakes in Alaska (out of the 229): 45

 

- Number of quakes in the States of America (other than Alaska): 43

 

- Number of quakes in Turkey: 31

 

- Number of quakes in the world (excluding the US and Alaska): 141

 

- Number of different countries that were hit by a quake: 36 

 

 

II. From October 31 to November 7, 2011:

 

- Total number of quakes: 239

 

- Number of quakes in Alaska (out of the 239): 53

 

- Number of quakes in the States of America (other than Alaska): 50

 

- Number of quakes in the world (excluding the US and Alaska): 136

 

- Number of different countries that were hit by a quake: 31

 

Looking at the above recorded data, one could conclude, for example, that Alaska is an intensely quake-prone area. Also, we "know" that according to science, quakes are crowded at the places where the continental plates meet one another, that quakes do not happen in the middle of the plates (continents), etc, and that when the latter happens, as in New Madrid, then we discover "ancient" faults and so on.

 

If quakes are a very serious matter, that is if an agonizing death is a serious matter, then we are obliged to see the quake-prone factor in a more conservative way.

 

For example, what if there are unknown "ancient faults" under Berlin, or Dresden, or Moscow, etc? Also, should we not take into account that the historical data that we have for quakes are minuscule?

 

Therefore, should we accept the axiom that any place on earth is quake-prone? The answer should be: Yes! 

 

Furthermore, that there are more than 200 quakes per week all over the earth in more than 30 countries cannot be ignored. Also, the fact that the majority of those quakes have a Magnitude between 4 and 5 Richter, is deadly significant. Such quakes affect the structural integrity of buildings, even mildly, and the harm is cumulative. All materials have "memory", in relation to their strength.    

 

So, having a planet "vibrating" with quakes and covered with concrete death-traps, what do we do?

A Call for a Solution

 

What follows is addressed mainly to the Turkish people, the Greek people, and the engineers and the technical universities of both countries:

 

After the collapse of a concrete building the "lucky" ones are those who die on the spot. An unknown number of trapped survivors, under hundreds of tons of concrete, are killed in a terrible manner by their...rescuers. At some point, a few days after the quake, the state (the politicians) orders the removal of the concrete mass with the use of heavy construction equipment, thus dismembering any survivors who are still alive. A couple of decades ago in Salonika, an engineering colleague of mine pleaded with the politicians not to use the construction equipment, as there might still be survivors under the mass of the concrete. They refused, and used the equipment only 48 hours after the quake. All my friend could do was to burst to tears. The same thing is happening this very minute (Nov. 11, 2011) in Turkey. 

 

Is there a solution? Did the technical universities of the world try seriously to find a solution, for more than a century?

 

During this period of time, what the universities did was to try to find out how to "strengthen" the concrete buildings by devising scale models of buildings and experimenting on them. The Japanese, once, tried to be "realistic", by avoiding the scale models, and fixed a... rocket on the top of a multi-story building! All the benefit these "toys" offered to humanity, was more and more dead in collapsed concrete buildings. 

 

If the extremely heavy and weak concrete of a tall building kills, what then could be the solution? Evidently, a low building made of light materials.

 

 Such a building should meet three criteria:

 

1. It should be a low one-story structure.

 

2. It should be of light, but sturdy material.

 

3. It should be inexpensive 

 

There has never been a serious effort by the technical universities of the world to design such a building for the benefit of ordinary people, to protect them from death when a quake hits. 

 

The argument that is usually raised against this proposal is that if you eliminate the tall buildings then you are apt to cover the surface of the earth with one-story houses for the billions of its inhabitants; an ecological catastrophe.

 

Let us be honest. Where did all these humans use to live before they inundated the few big cities in all countries, from Greece to China? Was the surface of the earth covered to capacity with their home villages? The "brutal" motive for people to move to the cities was and is poverty. Actually, it is a "benign" Phoenix Program initiated by the world economic elite; a sequel to the original Greek and Vietnamese murderous programs.

 

Also, there is another, rather "vulgar" development that refutes the above argument. For example, there are Greek immigrants, admittedly not very numerous, who after having been "successful" by climbing the social ladder from dishwashers in New York or Frankfurt to restaurateurs, they then build summer-houses back in their home villages, usually mimicking, architecturally, Swiss chalets, thus occupying two times their... allotted domicile space on the face of the earth.

 

An additional objection to the proliferation of the one-story home, possibly by ecologists this time, might be that this is a boon for the proliferation of the automobile, Le Corbusier's fervent vision. Wrong! This problem had been solved around the turn of the 20th century. The solution: the steel wheel on a steel rail. That is: mass transportation by trains, light-rail and the streetcar. A solution, which was "erased" by the General Motors et al in the 1930s and 1940s.

 

Finally, for some people, storing humans vertically towards heaven in tall buildings in mega-cities, is a way to make humanity "more productive and efficient".

 

In the "Special Issue" on "Better Cities" of the "Scientific American" magazine, for September 2011, (page 38), Luis M.A.Bettencourt and Geoffrey B.West write: "What we can say with certainty,..., is that increased population [in cities] promotes more intense and frequent social interactions...as well as economic pressures that weed out inefficiencies. In a city with high rents, only activities that add substantial value can be profitable. These economic pressures push urbanites to come up with new forms of organizations, products and services that carry more value added. In turn, higher profitability, excellence and choice tend to attract more talent to the city, pushing rents higher still, fuelling the need to find yet more productive activities..."

 

About "weed out inefficiencies", "rents", "economic pressures", " value added", and "profitability", no comment is necessary.

 

However, given that the majority of "educated" people in the West, and probably the writers of the above excerpt, consider the foundation of their culture and of their social thought to be the product of the city of Athens around 2,500 years ago (see Martin Bernal's "Black Athena"), it is a bit of a contradiction to ignore the fact that the area covered by the city of Athens, at that time, around the Acropolis, is the same area covered today by a few dozen taverns, peddling "moussaka" to the tourists. How come such "wisdom" came out of a postage-stamp city, not a mega-city?   

 

Furthermore, to invent the wheel or the transistor is the easy part. To understand the human nature is the hard one. Also, it is even harder to survive in a concrete multi-story building that was hit by an earthquake.  

 

 

A Proposal

 

A possible outline of action by the ordinary people of Turkey and Greece to solve the deadly problem of the quake could be as follows:

 

- Both peoples should ignore their respective governing elites. Any action by both peoples should be at the grassroots level, in a  pareconish way.

 

- Dialogue and cooperation between the two peoples should be the cardinal basis for finding a solution. 

 

-  Immediate and very close contact among the civil engineers and the civil engineering schools of both countries.

 

-  Honest evaluation of the history of concrete in relation to quakes.

 

- If the ordinary men and women of Turkey and Greece, with the help of the universities and of the engineers of both countries, decide that the solution rests on the design of a one-story house of lightweight materials, then a long-range program should be made for the initiation of a process of replacing the existing tall structures with the new low lightweight ones, recycling almost all of the materials of the existing buildings. Obviously, this will take many decades, maybe about a half century.

 

As already mentioned, this is only an outline by a single individual. There are more than 80 million Turks and Greeks capable to start thinking about the problem. One additional benefit of such a program could be that it will evolve into a political and social contact between the two peoples that will allow them to live in peace and dignity.

 

Also, it is possible that in the future this program could involve and the peoples at the rim of the Mediterranean Basin; Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, Egypt, Libya, Algeria, Tunisia, Morocco, etc.

 

The Turks and the Greeks can, of course, appeal to the rest of the world for cooperation and involvement in such a project. However, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of Illinois should definitely be involved in this Turko-Greek project. Especially, the University of Illinois, which has the best School of Civil Engineering  in the world.

 

The history of the University of Illinois in relation to quakes is quite interesting. Part of this history are Nathan M. Newmark, Hardy Cross, and Fazlur R. Khan. All three were among the most brilliant minds of the contemporary science of the world. 

 

- Newmark (1910 - 1981) was the head of the Civil Engineering Department of the U of Illinois, at Urbana, for 17 years. His work had a lot to do with earthquakes. All his life he tackled the most difficult engineering problems, even the design of structures to withstand a nuclear explosion, and gave brilliant solutions. He is famous for the quake-resistant design of the skyscraper "Torre Latinoamericana" in Mexico city. He was awarded The National Medal of Science and numerous other awards.

 

- Cross (1885 -1959)  was the originator, in 1936 at the U. of Illinois, of what is known to all the civil engineers of the world as the "Cross method", a tool that helped them tremendously in the design of structures, especially of multi-story concrete structures. 

 

 - Khan (1929 - 1982) "was a native of Bangladesh... [he] is considered as one of the greatest geniuses in the history of civil engineering... Khan's revolutionary design of a skyscraper is that the most ECONOMICAL way to build a skyscraper is the one in which it is built with thin solid walls as a TUBE..." [This from my ZNet Commentary, "Of Pyramids and Skyscrapers", of September 30, 2001]. The WTC twin towers were designed on the basis of Khan's revolutionary method.

 

All these three great engineers devoted their life to solve technical problems for the erection of multi-story buildings. The opposite of what is proposed here. Yet, what could their reaction be to such a proposal for a low light-weight building? I would like to think that, ultimately, they would agree that losing the lives of the hundreds of thousands of ordinary people in multi-story concrete buildings has not been seriously examined by the engineering profession and that something should be done.  

 

All three were serious and extremely rational individuals. Of these three, I had the chance to meet only Newmark, a polite, gentle, and honest person. About Khan it was written that he was a "technical genius with a sensitivity for people and the places in which they must live and work". Khan himself said: "I like to think myself a citizen of the world. If we don't have a sense of compassion on a world basis and on a man-to-man basis, we're never going to get out of the wars we're in". About Cross I do not know much. Yet, I am apt to think that he was not different from the other two.

 

It seems that these three exceptional individuals, in relation to quakes, had fallen to what might be called the "Robert Oppenheimer trap". After Oppenheimer tried to rationalize his involvement with the nukes, he said that he could not resist the feeling of "a technically sweet solution"! 

 

My guess is that, today, all three would agree to the solution presented here.

 

 

[Parenthesis: Here is a rough outline of a possible solution for an one-story light-weight building:

 

1. Construction of a concrete wall as a "base" of the building. Concrete?! Yes, concrete. Even of plain concrete, without steel reinforcement. However, the height of the wall should not exceed 4 feet (1.20 meters). This low wall will give the building a solid base, as a quasi "ballast", which can withstand mainly wind forces. This 4-feet high ballast-wall, even if it fails (which is improbable), will not trap people under it, because of its small height.

 

2. The floor should be a concrete slab (plain or with minimal steel reinforcement) that is monolithically connected to the low wall, forming thus a box-like lower part of the building. This will be beneficial to the building even if there is liquefaction. (Transformation of the soil into a liquid, for a fraction of the duration of the quake.)

 

3. The remaining 6 feet, to gain the total height of 10 feet of the building, should be a lightweight construction, resembling a cage, made of steel members, thus securing that the upper part of the walls and the roof will not kill people by falling on them. The steel to be used, mostly by recycling, is already used today as reinforcement in the slabs and columns of the traditional concrete structures, which are going to be demolished.

 

4. The steel cage, of the upper part of the structure , should be covered on the outside and the inside with a thin "skin" of fiber-reinforced concrete of a thickness of only half inch. Strange as it sounds, there has been experience with such "thin" fiber-reinforced materials for decades. Students in most civil engineering schools in the US take part in an annual competition of building...canoes out of such a "skin".

 

5. The low concrete wall of 4 feet and the space between the outer "skin" and the inner "skin" should be thermally insulated (preferably with local, or recycled, or newly invented material).

 

This is only an outline of a solution by a single person. There could be hundreds of better ones from thousands of others; Turks, Greeks, MIT, the U. of Illinois, and so on. End of the Parenthesis.]

 

It should be pointed out that no architects should be involved in this project. My experience with Greek architects, in relation to quakes is...terrifying. I feel that Prof. Christopher Alexander, already mentioned above, has been saying similar things for years, if not about quakes, at least about the "offerings" of architacts to humanity.

 

Here is a deadly exercise in aesthetics by Le Corbusier. To make buildings more beautiful he introduced the notion of the "pilotis". That is, he let the building stand on stilts, by eliminating the walls of the ground floor and left only the concrete columns. Also, he said the less numerous columns the better.

 

There are two multi-story apartment buildings on Le Corbusier stilts, not far from my place. During the big quake of 1981 in Athens they were hit severely and all the concrete stilts were almost destroyed. The state with the help of its engineering "commissars" allowed the "repair" of the damage. Today, more than 40 families (about 160 humans) are living in a terrible death-trap. 

 

This Commentary is addressed to the Turks and to the Greeks in general, and specifically to the inhabitants of Istanbul, of Athens, and of Lisbon.

 

Finally, to close this rather painful ZNet Commentary: There is no need to include here a list of the dead from quakes through the ages. The list can be found even in the yearly "Almanacs". 

 

 

 

P.S.

I feel that I have to justify why, while living in Athens with all the social and the political tempest around me, I chose to write once more a "Commentary" on quakes.

 

1. I know that this very minute tens of thousands of Turks are suffering extremely, because of the latest quake that hit them.

 

2. The Turks did not have a choice. During the 10 seconds of the duration of the quake the only choice you have is to try to avoid thinking about the way the concrete slabs will crash you to a pulp. The people of Athens have a choice: they can revolt. Which they do!

 

Given this chance to communicate with this Commentary, here is a very brief report on the situation in Athens:

 

I. Lately, there are numerous classified ads in the papers by young Greeks, who seek to exchange the family apartments in Athens with a small farm or a piece of farm-land in rural areas, so that they can escape from the city and survive economically. 

 

II. Months ago the Greek government decided to add an extra tax to the property of the Greeks. To extract the money from the people, the Government decided to send the extra tax bill through the regular electricity bill and in case the family did not pay the extra tax to disconnect the family house from the electric grid.

 

Result: the labor union of the electricity workers decided to not disconnect the houses, in solidarity with the populace. The government hired private companies to do the dirty work. The unions threaten to use violence to protect the populace, against the private (enterprise) "thugs".

 

III. This is 11 a.m., in Athens. Four hours from now the huge annual march from the Polytechnic to the US Embassy to commemorate the 1973 uprising of the students against the US instigated military dictatorship will start on 3 p. m. There are 7,000 policemen on duty ready to carry out their Christian duty. Last time a similar situation existed, about 20 years ago, the pigs killed a young woman and a young man at Syntagma Square, by crushing their skulls.