On the night of September 8, a magnitude 6.8 earthquake hit Morocco in the Atlas Mountains near the historic town of Marrakesh. The tremor, the biggest to strike the country in over a century, shattered hundreds of buildings and killed nearly 3,000 people.
. She shared her thoughts on what engineers can learn from these events and how countries can build resilient cities better prepared for a future likely to see more frequent and intense natural disasters.had a magnitude of 6.8 and was relatively shallow. Being closer to the surface means there was more shaking of the ground, which led to more damage. Also, the earthquake happened at night, when many people were home and asleep.
The vulnerability of buildings and other infrastructure there also played a role. In places like the Moroccan villages, there are a lot of older buildings and unreinforced structures made of stone and brick blocks that tend to collapse during earthquakes. There might also have been newer buildings not built properly following modern codes or standards. These kinds of vulnerabilities can lead to a lot of destruction, which we saw in Morocco, as well as in Turkey earlier this year.
Our building codes don't reduce the risk of collapse to zero, but countries that have good building codes and follow them tend to suffer less damage during hazards like earthquakes. Haiti didn't have building codes in 2010. When the country was hit by earthquakes, the degree of damage was astounding. In countries that have building codes, you wouldn't see as much loss of life from an earthquake of similar size.
What about parts of the world at less risk of earthquakes? What kind of construction standards do they need? In areas where there is lower earthquake risk, such as parts of the central United States, the infrastructure is designed to resist much weaker ground-shaking. But there are other hazards, like hurricanes, flooding, and wildfires that affect what the building codes should require and how we design our physical infrastructure.
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