外面对教学楼的评论，暂无时间翻译。愿看的看吧。

Alex_rcpilot

China earthquake brings faulty school design to the fore
中国地震凸显低劣校舍设计问题

By Andrew C. Revkin Published: May 14, 2008

The enormous loss of life in collapsed schools around China's quake-stricken Sichuan Province could have been significantly reduced using known methods for designing or retrofitting structures in earthquake zones, several experts on global hazards said.

But China is just one of many countries with known earthquake vulnerability that has been slow to transform schools - a keystone of any community - from potential death traps into havens, these experts and some community campaigners for school safety said.

Hundreds of students are thought to have perished in schools during the earthquake.

Experts on earthquake dangers have warned for years that tens of millions of students in thousands of schools, from Asia to the Americas, face similar risks, yet programs to reinforce existing schools or require that new ones be built to extra-sturdy standards are inconsistent, slow and inadequately financed.

While earthquakes can sometimes exact a far wider toll on other public buildings, school collapses are particularly wrenching, development officials and experts say, because students are often what propel a struggling nation from poverty to prosperity.

In 2004, the 30-nation Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development released a study, "Keeping Schools Safe in Earthquakes," concluding that schools "routinely" collapsed in earthquakes around the world because of avoidable design or construction errors, or because existing laws and building codes were not enforced.

"Unless action is taken immediately to address this problem, much greater loss of life and property will occur," the report says.

The risks are growing, experts say, as populations in poor regions continue to rise and the world, rich and poor, shifts ever more toward urban centers, many with well-charted seismic threats.

In recent years, there have been deadly school collapses after earthquakes in Italy, Algeria, Morocco and Turkey. Most notably, in Pakistan on Oct. 8, 2005, at least 17,000 children died as more than 7,000 schools collapsed after a powerful jolt shook a mountainous region near the Indian border.

Similar risks, and delays in reducing them, exist in countries rich and poor from the Americas across Europe and Asia.

In 2006, Brian Tucker, an earthquake specialist who runs a private group, GeoHazards International, presented a study on schools to the Economic Cooperation Organization, a group of 10 countries in Europe and Asia. The analysis found that 180 million people, including 40 million school-age children, faced "an earthquake risk equal to that of northern Pakistan." Tucker also was a co-author of the 2004 OECD report.

Delays in addressing such threats sometimes result less from financing and engineering than from societal inertia, given competing problems and the unpredictable nature of earthquakes, said Ben Wisner, a former geography professor at California State University, Long Beach, and a founder of the Coalition for Global School Safety.

Often, money and technology are not the issue, he said, so much as access to basic information about risks and simple ways to bolster buildings.

"On the whole, the cost of designing and building a school, say, a three-story junior high school in Mexico City, is only about 5 percent higher," Wisner said. "You don't necessarily design a building to avoid collapse, but design so that it's a survivable collapse. You want large voids so they can be accessed by rescuers."

There have been some successful efforts to reinforce schools, in places including Katmandu, Nepal, and parts of Turkey, he said.

Progress often is a result of persistent pressure by a particular engineer or safety campaigner.

The successes are far outnumbered by places that still face calamity on the scale of that seen in Sichuan, he and others said.

And the risks are not limited to poor or emerging countries. In Vancouver, British Columbia, parents' groups have been agitating to accelerate a decades-long program aimed at bringing schools up to modern earthquake standards.

While there is no reliable global tally of unsafe schools in quake zones, regional snapshots are chillingly clear. A report being presented at an international conference on school safety, coincidentally beginning on Wednesday in Islamabad, says that more than 80 percent of schools in Pakistan are unprotected from shocks like the one in October 2005.

The inertia is one result of a range of factors, including deep poverty in some places and political immobility in others.

"It's so disappointing to see these things happening again and again - little kids caught in a collapsed school building," aid Thomas Parsons, a geophysicist with the U.S. Geological Survey in Menlo Park, California.

Around Sichuan, the earthquake may well have raised the danger level on nearby faults, Parsons said, noting a 2007 paper mapping the region's unstable underpinnings.

hzxzhp

偶英语水平=0

Alex_rcpilot

等我晚上回家后抽时间翻译吧。国内外的消息都看看。

Alex_rcpilot

How China's earthquake struck
Scientists: 7.9-magnitude shaker hit in two stages


By Shino Yuasa updated 12:26 p.m. ET May 15, 2008

TOKYO - The fault line that caused this week's devastating earthquake in China probably buckled in two stages, and the hardness of the terrain contributed to the wide reach of the damage, Japanese scientists said Thursday.

The 7.9-magnitude quake on Monday struck in Sichuan province but rattled buildings as far away as Beijing, Shanghai and Thailand, affecting 10 million people and killing at least 15,000.

Yuji Yagi, a seismologist at Tsukuba University, said data show the 155 mile Longmenshan Fault tore in two sections, the first one ripping about seven meters, followed by a second one that sheared four meters.

Despite the two-stage quake, which he estimated lasted for about two minutes, it was the shallowness of the epicenter — only 6 miles — that contributed most to the temblor's destructive power, he said.

"The damage was very severe because the quake's epicenter was shallow, and the quake occurred in densely populated areas," said Yagi.

The other distinguishing factor to the quake was the firmness of the terrain in central China, which allowed seismic waves to travel large distances without losing their power, Tokyo University seismologist Teruyuki Kato said.

Kato said the hardness of the land in China contrasted with Japan, where patches of soft terrain can often blunt the reach of earthquakes.

"The strata are very hard in the quake-hit region, and that allowed the seismic waves to travel far, while their strength remained intact," he said.

Japan is one of the world's most quake prone nations, and media there have focused on the possible role of shoddy construction methods in the large death toll in the China quake.

Japan's most destructive quake in recent times was the 7.3-magnitude temblor in the western city of Kobe, which killed more than 6,400 people in January 1995.

Yagi calculated that the energy level of the China quake was 30 times that of the one that struck Kobe.

Copyright 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.


值得注意的内容是：这次地震能量是1995年日本阪神地震的30倍。那年神户死亡6500多人。

MissTequila

这的确是一方面的问题
不过这次外媒对我们采取的急救措施，救援人员的到位评价还是很高滴

MissTequila

Yagi calculated that the energy level of the China quake was 30 times that of the one that struck Kobe.---当地建筑和地形也是有关的吧

Alex_rcpilot

是嘀，本来全国人民就被ZD份子和外国反华势力激怒了。又突遇天灾，当然更加团结。这次全国行动如此一致很让人感动。

Alex_rcpilot

原帖由 MissTequila 于 2008-5-16 23:22 发表
Yagi calculated that the energy level of the China quake was 30 times that of the one that struck Kobe.---当地建筑和地形也是有关的吧

嗯，我刚翻译完这篇，看内容就知道了。

TOKYO - The fault line that caused this week's devastating earthquake in China probably buckled in two stages, and the hardness of the terrain contributed to the wide reach of the damage, Japanese scientists said Thursday.
东京 - 日本科学家周四表示引发本周中国毁灭性地震的断层带错动可能分为两个阶段，硬质地表造成大规模损失。

The 7.9-magnitude quake on Monday struck in Sichuan province but rattled buildings as far away as Beijing, Shanghai and Thailand, affecting 10 million people and killing at least 15,000.
周一的7.9级地震发生在四川省，却撼动远至北京、上海与泰国等地区，一千万人遭到波及，至少15000人死亡。

Yuji Yagi, a seismologist at Tsukuba University, said data show the 155 mile Longmenshan Fault tore in two sections, the first one ripping about seven meters, followed by a second one that sheared four meters.
八木佑治，筑波大学的地震学家称155英里长的龙门山断层裂为两块，第一块滑动约7米，另一块错动约4米。

Despite the two-stage quake, which he estimated lasted for about two minutes, it was the shallowness of the epicenter — only 6 miles — that contributed most to the temblor's destructive power, he said.
他表示除了分为两阶段、持续约两分钟的震动之外，仅6英里深的浅层震源才是地震毁灭性后果的罪魁祸首。

"The damage was very severe because the quake's epicenter was shallow, and the quake occurred in densely populated areas," said Yagi.
佑治说：“因为震源浅，震中位于人口稠密区，所以损失非常严重”

The other distinguishing factor to the quake was the firmness of the terrain in central China, which allowed seismic waves to travel large distances without losing their power, Tokyo University seismologist Teruyuki Kato said.
东经大学地震学家加藤照之说，与此次地震相关的另一个因素就是中原地区的坚硬地壳，这种地质能让震波能量毫不衰减地传播非常远的距离。

Kato said the hardness of the land in China contrasted with Japan, where patches of soft terrain can often blunt the reach of earthquakes.
加藤称日本的土地松软，往往能起到削弱地震能量的作用，而相比之下中国的土地很坚硬。

"The strata are very hard in the quake-hit region, and that allowed the seismic waves to travel far, while their strength remained intact," he said.
他说：“地震袭击区域的地层非常坚硬，以致地震波可以将其全部能量传播很远。”

Japan is one of the world's most quake prone nations, and media there have focused on the possible role of shoddy construction methods in the large death toll in the China quake.
日本是世界上地震最频繁的国家之一，当地媒体正在关注低劣建筑质量在中国地震巨大伤亡数字背后扮演的角色。

Japan's most destructive quake in recent times was the 7.3-magnitude temblor in the western city of Kobe, which killed more than 6,400 people in January 1995.
日本近代最具毁灭性的地震是1995年元月袭击西部城市神户的7.3级阪神地震，造成6400多人死亡。

Yagi calculated that the energy level of the China quake was 30 times that of the one that struck Kobe.
佑治计算出此次中国地震释放的能量相当于阪神地震的30倍。

MissTequila

类似的报道好像我在哪里也看到过
外媒的网站上面图片＋文字，也很感染人的说...

Alex_rcpilot

嗯，不论地震之前各地建设有多不到位，这次灾后全国上下的团结气氛让老外们不得不敬畏。