Would you send your kids to this primary school?

As part of my research I am reviewing past mission reports complied by the Earthquake Engineering Field Investigation Team (EEFIT), a group of expert engineers who visit countries shortly after seismic disasters to assess the engineering damage.

Over and over again the reports state that even if adequate building engineering codes have been introduced and enforced, damage and collapse of new design structures continues to be caused by the poor quality of construction. Seismic design is one issue, good quality construction is the next.

I came across this newly constructed concrete column (see photo below) whilst assessing the seismic capacity of a primary school in the Caribbean. This column to beam connection (along with those in the distance) has substantial performance requirements as they are responsible for supporting lateral loads applied to the building. Simply, lateral loads arise primarily though wind pressure, pushing agains the building and during seismic ground shaking.

During an earthquake this structural 'weak-link' may cause the column to fail and as you may be able to imagine, if a column fails it is no longer able to support the beams/floor/roof connected to it and the building is only going one way - down.

But education is important, and this developing country has large but very infrequent earthquake (around every 150 years). The last major earthquake was 158 years ago posing a very real risk decision taken by many people in seismically active areas.