Earthquake Protection
Chapter One
Earthquakes,
Disasters
and Protection
1.1 Earthquake Protection: Past Failure
and Present Opportunity
In spite of the huge technical achievements of the last century - which have given
us skyscraper cities, fast and cheap air travel and instant global telecommunications,
as well as eradicating many major diseases and providing the potential
to feed our burgeoning population - over much of the world the threat of earthquakes
has remained untamed. As later chapters will show, the progress we have
made in reducing the global death toll from earthquakes is modest, and at the
beginning of the twenty-first century, we have become distressingly familiar with
tragic media images of the total devastation of towns, villages and human lives
caused by large earthquakes, for which their victims have been quite unprepared.
One possible reason for the lack of progress in saving lives from earthquakes
is that although they are among our oldest enemies, it is only in the last quarter of
the twentieth century that we have begun to understand how to protect ourselves
against them. From time to time in our history, parts of the earth have apparently
randomly been shaken viole ... read full excerpt from Earthquake Protection ebook
