Wind-Related Disaster Risk Reduction for Haiti

We all know about the thousands of deaths and damages recently in Haiti due to a very strong earthquake.  Efforts in rebuilding are now on-going, and of course, people are now trying to build homes that are more earthquake-resistant.  But earthquakes are not all that Haiti needs to prepare for.  Haiti is also in a hurricane-prone area, being just next to the Atlantic Ocean.

Our graduate school’s program director and current IAWE President, Prof Yukio Tamura started this multi-organization effort on “wind-related disaster risk reduction”.  Their first activity was to organize the “International Forum on Tornado Disaster Risk Reduction in Bangladesh.”  The same group was involved in Haiti and prepared this document: http://www.unesco-ipred.org/gtfbc/Haiti%20English%20LQ.pdf.  It is available on the website of the (ISDR) Global Task Force on Building Codes (GTFBC) for Haiti.  There is a ton of interesting and useful information on that website.  I browsed through them and found these particularly interesting:

• "Improvement of Rural Housing in Haiti to Withstand Hurricanes" (by Frederick C. Cuny, 1982)
• "improved building practices for hurricanes" (Caribbean Construction Magazine, Third Quarter 2009)
• "Hurricanes: How to build a safer wooden house" (Jamaica Red Cross)
• "Ten key points of cyclone resistant construction" (DWF)