https://www.loom.com/share/894f18b385ad4c82a700efb10252c826
In November 1755, hell broke out in the capital of Portugal. Lisbon, and all that the country encompassed, fell to one of the largest natural disasters in European history. An earthquake, whose epicentre lay in the ocean, took advantage of the poor country's lack of infrastructure. Buildings — residential and royal — fell in fantastic fashion. The city was soon stormed by biblical tsunamis, forcing the surviving population to higher ground. For the few that were left, earthquake frequencies set the city on fire — house and castles alike — as candles fell in buildings, leaving Portugal in flames.
Earthquake. Tsunami. Fire.
The king, who unironically developed a life-long phobia of stone walls, fled the city to live in the royal campsite, leaving the Marquee in control. Within a couple weeks, the city was rebuilt with seismic resistance in mind. The placement of each piece of wood and stone was calculated to resist the next disaster, encouraging newfound engineering to optimize these buildings, not for unique design but for sustainability. These practices continued throughout the next several centuries, including seismic practices by Salazar, the fascist patriot, war-neutrality advocate and faux-dictator, in modernizing Portugese infrastructure and accelerating economic growth by enforcing policy — some avant-garde, others beyond control of the people.
The country moved out of a state of disarray and towards a functioning state beyond the scope of natural disasters. This was, nevertheless, as a function of state-wide disaster, necessitating thoughtful engineering practices to revive the country. Not all cities have this same opportunity.
Fast-forward to 2023. In the recent Turkey-Syrian earthquakes, buildings broke in a similar fashion. This time, however, it was avoidable. A few years prior, in 2018, it was reported that over 50% of constructed buildings in Turkey were in violation of regulations — an attempt to prioritize affordability over policy. Later, it was found that nearly all fallen buildings during the earthquakes were constructed as such.
<aside> 🌏 "earthquakes don't kill people, bad buildings do"
</aside>
The earthquake building crisis is at fault to:
It is for this reason that billions went to the reconstruction of the Turkish buildings, while nearly none to effective building analysis.
These case studies and countless more — research into the decay of earthquake frequencies in South-East Australia and personal conversations with UNICEF representatives after 2015 Nepal earthquakes — have culminated to three key insights that I have been trying to solve.