A magnitude 4.3 earthquake rocked northern Illinois early on Wednesday, shaking an area about 50 miles west-northwest of downtown Chicago. If you think this just happens in Haiti or California, this is a reminder that earthquakes can happen anywhere. So, it’s time to check our earthquake preparedness.
Previously, I have posted links to this Natural Disaster Guide from Consumer Reports. Or, if you live in Canada, check out this page on GetPrepared.ca. And you can check out my big post of earthquake resources, “How Big Is Your Earthquake Risk.”
However, alert reader Andy sent me the following email …
Dear Sean, Here is large cut and paste from an email about earthquake survival that I just received. It refutes the governments recommendations. Thought you should know since you’re advising about survival. Andy
We were taught to duck and cover years ago. This is wrong….
Read on and pass on. This has been around before but it’s a good reminder since the recent events in Haiti. Please read this and pass the info along to your family members; it could save their lives someday!
XX Sean’s note — What Andy sent me was an excerpt from an article by controversial rescue expert Doug Copp. You can find more of Doug’s stuff at http://www.amerrescue.org/triangleoflife.htm. Here is the excerpt. After you read this, please read some competing and debunking opinions at the end …
My name is Doug Copp. I am the Rescue Chief and Disaster Manager of the American Rescue Team International (ARTI), the world’s most experienced rescue team. The information in this article will save lives in an earthquake.
I have crawled inside 875 collapsed buildings, worked with rescue teams from
60 countries, founded rescue teams in several countries, and I am a member of many rescue teams from many countries.I was the United Nations expert in Disaster Mitigation for two years. I have worked at every major disaster in the world since 1985, except for simultaneous disasters.
The first building I ever crawled inside of was a school in Mexico City during the 1985 earthquake. Every child was under its desk. Every child was crushed to the thickness of their bones. They could have survived by lying down next to their desks in the aisles. It was obscene, unnecessary and I wondered why the children were not in the aisles. I didn’t at the time know that the children were told to hide under something.
Simply stated, when buildings collapse, the weight of the ceilings falling upon the objects or furniture inside crushes these objects, leaving a space or void next to them. This space is what I call the ‘triangle of life’. The larger the object, the stronger, the less it will compact. The less the object compacts, the larger the void, the greater the probability that the person who is using this void for safety will not be injured. The next time you watch collapsed buildings, on television, count the ‘triangles’ you see formed. They are everywhere. It is the most common shape, you will see, in a collapsed building.
TIPS FOR EARTHQUAKE SAFETY
1) Most everyone who simply ‘ducks and covers’ WHEN BUILDINGS COLLAPSE are crushed to death. People who get under objects, like desks or cars, are crushed.
2) Cats, dogs and babies often naturally curl up in the fetal position. You should too in an earthquake. It is a natural safety/survival instinct. You can survive in a smaller void. Get next to an object, next to a sofa, next to a large bulky object that will compress slightly but leave a void next to it.
3) Wooden buildings are the safest type of construction to be in during an earthquake. Wood is flexible and moves with the force of the earthquake. If the wooden building does collapse, large survival voids are created. Also, the wooden building has less concentrated, crushing weight. Brick buildings will break into individual bricks. Bricks will cause many injuries but less squashed bodies than concrete slabs.
4) If you are in bed during the night and an earthquake occurs, simply roll off the bed. A safe void will exist around the bed. Hotels can achieve a much greater survival rate in earthquakes, simply by posting a sign on The back of the door of every room telling occupants to lie down on the floor, next to the bottom of the bed during an earthquake.
5) If an earthquake happens and you cannot easily escape by getting out the door or window, then lie down and curl up in the fetal position next to a sofa, or large chair.
6) Most everyone who gets under a doorway when buildings collapse is killed. How? If you stand under a doorway and the doorjamb falls forward or backward you will be crushed by the ceiling above. If the door jam falls sideways you will be cut in half by the doorway. In either case, you will be killed!
7) Never go to the stairs. The stairs have a different ‘moment of frequency’
(they swing separately from the main part of the building). The stairs and remainder of the building continuously bump into each other until structural failure of the stairs takes place. The people who get on stairs before they fail are chopped up by the stair treads - horribly mutilated. Even if the building doesn’t collapse, stay away from the stairs. The stairs are a likely part of the building to be damaged. Even if the stairs are not collapsed by the earthquake, they may collapse later when overloaded by fleeing people. They should always be checked for safety, even when the rest of the building is not damaged.Get Near the Outer Walls Of Buildings Or Outside Of Them If Possible - It is much better to be near the outside of the building rather than the interior. The farther inside you are from the outside perimeter of the building the greater the probability that your escape route will be blocked.
9) People inside of their vehicles are crushed when the road above falls in an earthquake and crushes their vehicles; which is exactly what happened with the slabs between the decks of the Nimitz Freeway. The victims of the San Francisco earthquake all stayed inside of their vehicles. They were all killed. They could have easily survived by getting out and sitting or lying next to their vehicles. Everyone killed would have survived if they had been able to get out of their cars and sit or lie next to them. All the crushed cars had voids 3 feet high next to them, except for the cars that had columns fall directly across them.
10) I discovered, while crawling inside of collapsed newspaper offices and other offices with a lot of paper, that paper does not compact. Large voids are found surrounding stacks of paper.
Spread the word and save someone’s life… The Entire world is experiencing natural calamities so be prepared!
XX Sean again — Okay, sorry about the long excerpt. Now, I have to tell you there are other experts who vehemently DISAGREE with what Mr. Copp says.
1) The American Red Cross. Rocky Lopes of the American Red Cross writes: “Mr. Copp’s assertions in his message that everyone is always crushed if they get under something is incorrect.” Lopes adds: “What the claims made by Mr. Copp of ARTI, Inc., does not seem to distinguish is that the recommendation to ‘drop, cover, and hold on!’ is a U.S.-based recommendation based on U.S. Building Codes and construction standards. Much research in the United States has confirmed that ‘Drop, Cover, and Hold On!’ has saved lives in the United States. Engineering researchers have demonstrated that very few buildings collapse or ‘pancake’ in the U.S. as they might do in other countries. Using a web site to show one picture of one U.S. building that had a partial collapse after a major quake in an area with thousands of buildings that did not collapse during the same quake is inappropriate and misleading.”
Read the entire Red Cross response.
2) Snopes.com, the Internet debunking site, also has an opinion: “We can’t say that every single point mentioned in the article by controversial “rescue expert’ Doug Copp is wrong or bad advice, but there are some pretty substantial reasons why readers might want to take the article (particularly its advice that everyone who uses the ‘duck and cover’ technique in an earthquake ends up crushed to death) with some very large grains of salt.”
Read the entire Snopes.com response.
3) HowStuffWorks (one of my favorite websites) also gets into the act. In an article titled “The Triangle of Life Myth”, HowStuffWorks writes: “[Copp] has also been shown to have distorted and selectively used evidence to prove his points [source: Petal]. The U.S. Department of Justice launched a fraud investigation because Copp received $649,000 from the 9/11 victims fund yet apparently did little or no rescue work and did not suffer the serious injuries he claimed. In addition, the chief of special operations for the New York Fire Department called Copp ‘a bald-faced liar’ [source: Linthicum].”
Read the entire HowStuffWorks.com article.
XX Sean’s final note: This is a great example that shows you can’t trust everything you see on the Internet. Perhaps Mr. Copp is correct about some things. But I don’t think the American Red Cross has any agenda except to save lives. I think I’ll go with the Red Cross’ advice.
Related Posts
- Yellowstone Rumbles a Warning to Be Prepared (02/04/10)
{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
Hi Sean,
You did some great research to respond to my email, ala “alternative view to duck and cover.” Thanks for your thoroughness!! Now we can read more and make up our minds… It confirms your bent toward research and understanding things, which is, I guess, your forte.
Andy
IS FRACKING drilling causing earthquakes? First ever recorded in 140 year history in Cleburne, Texas.
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_TEXAS_EARTHQUAKES_DRILLING?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT
……..
Please Sean, would you talk to some USGS people about whether Fracking drilling or all the additional energy and metals and mineral drilling that is occurring in anticipation of currency devaluations may have perhaps caused the devastation in Haiti, but, even more ominously to our survival globally, and as you previously mentioned, the greater seismic activity of Yellowstone which has a monster supervolcano just beneath.
If what you can do as a valued media delays that supervolcano from erupting, I think that is a worthwhile goal to support. It would be worthwhile, even if it meant stopping fracking drilling or paying mines especially around supervolcanos to store in the ground their valuable resources (maybe the GLD SLV ETFs being fractional reserves could actually have something backing them that would be better left in the ground than in a safe which is better than the very little that the ETFs perhaps have now).
I hope that we can solve climate change. I also hope that we don’t set off abrupt climate change because the OTC Derivatives are being used to collapse currencies, states and nations, leading to even more drilling and mining that sets off Yellowstone sooner rather than later.
Good luck here to us all.
Great post and it sounds like the controversy is more personality driven than fact driven. It’s too bad Copp couldn’t work WITH existing agencies to see if there was a way (or a need) to integrate his insights into applicable safety precautions. The Red Cross agrees that the “void safety” argument is real and valid but that it’s too complicated to teach as a universal precaution, especially in light of the fact that U.S. building codes generally prevent “pancaking.” Personally, I’ve always practiced getting down on the floor next to the bed (rather than under or on top) during earthquake drills because common sense wise, it felt wisest–the more that winds up on top of you during an earthquake, the harder it is to get out afterward. Thanks for these discussions about earthquake preparedness! It’s a great reminder to scout the home with “emergency eyes.”
Thank you for bringing it to my attention, Andy. I’m always open to new information, and I’m never afraid to be proven wrong. Sometimes it’s the only way to get on the right path.
There may be some truth on both sides of the issue depending on the circumstances. In the recent Haitian earthquake several missionaries from Colorado Springs, CO survived because they were standing by the check in desk at their hotel. They fell to the floor and the desk helped form the triangle Copp describes.