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Japan's Strict Building Codes Saved Lives
- Vivtek 16y agoAll strict building codes save lives. That's the whole point of building codes. Sheesh. You'd think New Yorkers would get that.
- va_coder 16y agoone man's red tape is another man's life saver
- muzz 16y agoThere are many who would classify building codes as unnecessary and burdensome regulation, and would instead prefer to let the free market figure it out. One of their arguments for example would be that building codes increase the cost of building, thus leaving fewer people able to afford it. I'm not saying that I agree with that, just pointing out the opposing view.
- code_duck 16y agoUnfortunately, the way the 'market figures it out' involves thousands of people dying in order to get the point across to 'the market'.
- orblivion 16y agoDo you suppose that the government anticipated the need for building codes before anybody ever died?
- Vivtek 16y agoI can't tell what rhetorical position you're trying to take, but I suspect, from my knowledge of building practices and codes in Richmond, Indiana from the 19th century to today, that the answer is that no, the government did not regulate building before it became all too clear that building needed to be regulated. All our old houses here are built like Sherman tanks - but that's because the ones that weren't built like Sherman tanks are long decayed and gone, and in some cases burned to the ground with loss of all on board. Electrification took a lot of people by surprise. I have some pretty horrible wiring in the attic myself (not live, though).
- WalterBright 16y agoI've done some renovation work on old buildings. I recommend removing ALL of the old wire. There's nothing like looking at a shabby old wire and wondering if it is hot or not. Even worse, sometimes an idiot will try to reconnect that old wire, yes, I've seen them try it. Rip all of it out.
- Vivtek 16y agoOh, it's on the list, trust me. I've got fossil infrastructure in here over a hundred years old - in a way I feel like I should get some archaeologists in to catalog it before I get it all out. The scary thing is that the basement lights are still on the old wiring - roughly 1920's vintage. Fortunately, no gaslights left, although I do have one fitting in the upstairs sitting room!
- tomkarlo 16y agoThere's a saying that the fire code is written in blood. Generally, most of the regulations are there because when they weren't, it resulted in some disaster that cost lives. If it didn't, there wouldn't be the political will to incur greater cost and complexity in construction. That doesn't mean that the codes shouldn't be updated / refactored once in a while, but that's a pretty difficult thing to undertake, and there may not be political will...
- tomkarlo 16y agoThere's a saying that the fire code is written in blood. Generally, most of the regulations are there because when they weren't, it resulted in some disaster that cost lives. If it didn't, there wouldn't be the political will to incur greater cost and complexity in construction. That doesn't mean that the codes shouldn't be updated / refactored once in a while, but that's a pretty difficult thing to undertake, and there may not be political will...
- mattlanger 16y agoGodwin's Law, HackerNews edition: as a non-tech policy discussion grows longer, the probability of a comment thread devolving into an argument between competing ideas of libertarian vs. interventionist market theologies approaches 1.
- grourk 16y agoWell, that's kind of the underlying point of the article and the discussion around it.
- mattlanger 16y agoAgreed, I was just trying to jocularly comment on the Things That Don't Exactly Belong On Hacker News aspect of it by pointing out that those conversations always end up in the same place.
- mturmon 16y agoAnd, in addition, these conversations tend to be rather shallow and un-anchored by fact. More an exhibition case for general philosophical predilections than a serious examination of the particular policy issue.
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- sethg 16y agoThe tendency to degenerate into arguments over libertarianism predates Hacker News. Ron(?) Newman proposed it as “Newman’s Corollary to Godwin’s Law” over ten years ago.
- Semiapies 16y agoYou mean like the people who died to instigate those very building codes?
- code_duck 16y agoSure... so who reacted first, the government or the capitalists?
- Semiapies 16y agoConsidering how many codes (building codes, health codes, etc.) started out as efforts in the private sector by the likes of insurance companies and restaurant reviewers, it seems that answer is would be the capitalists, most of the time.
- code_duck 16y agoSo, if the government removed those legal restrictions, do you think those industries would move to make their operations more safe, or less expensive for themselves in the short term?
- tel 16y agoAs much as I often tend toward arguments for freer markets, it's pretty conclusively known that people are terrible at judging long-term risk. Even with hedging of risks and liabilities involved in shoddy construction, even with information brokers in place to help people make informed decisions, even assuming ample construction of houses across the spectrum for all kinds of buyers, it definitely seems like without some kind of guiding hand that failure to consider long-term risks will lead to a lot of deaths. What's worse is that a lot of the codes are in place to protect neighbors as well. Electrical wiring codes, for instance, are there to prevent fires. The hypothetical You might say that this turns into insurance and liability, but accurately judging the long-term risk and correlative damages sounds exactly like a government imposing regulations.
- Vivtek 16y agoSure. (1) They've never seen a shanty town, and (2) they make the same argument about banking regulations. Building codes are, in fact, the market response to earlier problems with lots of houses burning and falling down. The fact that later generations who grew up with houses not burning or falling down don't have the insight to know this is not evidence that they're right. And they always make the argument that it would be good for the poor, and it's always bullshit. The poor don't benefit from dying periodically because some jerk made a quicker buck than he otherwise would have.
- yummyfajitas 16y agoThe alternative to a shanty town is not a safe, well built suburb. It's homelessness or at least deeper poverty (pay more for housing = pay less for food). You get shanty towns when people are too poor to afford anything else. People don't live in a shithole just for kicks, they do it because they have no choice. We shouldn't pretend this tradeoff doesn't exist.
- Retric 16y agoShanty downs reduce the incentive to build high quality structures. Basically there is little incentive to build structures out of sink with the property value of the land they occupy. And the value of land is dominated by the value of the infrastructure around it. You can build a surprisingly nice house for 1,000$ worth of materials, but there is no incentive when you build in the middle of a shanty town.
- yummyfajitas 16y agoIsn't the incentive to build a nice house for $1000 that you get to live in it? Of course, that $1000 house costs a full year of wages from a person earning $3-4/day and spending almost all of it on essentials. And this ignores the fact that many shantytowns occur in areas where property rights are weakly enforced - build a nice house, and 20 people will show up claiming they own it. Even if you have the money, you might instead be spending it on your children's education or something of that nature. Shantytowns are a result of poverty and nonexistent property rights. Building codes, even if they were enforced, would not magically enable shantytown dwellers to afford something better.
- svlla 16y agothere are many who would classify some building codes as unnecessary and some as absolutely essential, but for others the difference between the two is just too much to fathom... and as a result of their brains hurting so much, or from ulterior motives, they come up with something completely asinine: remove all regulations, they're too hard, and let's just find out what happens! turns out, most of the time that's actually too much for everyone else to fathom, frankly.
- tel 16y agoIt's a news non-sequitur though: Huge earthquake in Japan, structural engineers know what they're talking about. Does anyone know if Japan has some equivalent to the Canadian Iron Ring[1]? I feel like examples like this drive home how it's even more meaningful if you live in the Ring of Fire. (Which would be an ideal name for such a ring) [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_Ring http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_Ring
- brown9-2 16y agoSheesh. You'd think New Yorkers would get that. I feel compelled to point out that not all journalists from the New York Times necessarily reside in New York. Based on his past articles and Wikipedia entry, Norimitsu Onishi seems to have been the NYT's Tokyo bureau chief at one point in time.
- OstiaAntica 16y agoBuilding codes were on the books in Haiti too. There is a lot more to this question, including the presence of honest government, the ability of an economy to afford the code, and a healthy insurance market. Insurance companies often require higher standards than building code demands. Also, politically, the reason some societies have strict building codes is because there is a group-- insurance companies-- that have an economic incentive to push for stronger codes.
- Vivtek 16y agoExcellent point.
- cheez 16y agoI once read a passage on how insurance companies would be the biggest driving force in a completely free state. For example, you would insure your house against theft which would make it economical for them to create a kind of police force. Not saying I'd like that, but interesting to see how other things already operate that way.
- notahacker 16y agoAt the risk of letting this discussion degenerate into a debate over the libertarian definition of "free"... It would also make it economical for insurance companies to quite literally be thieves, and uneconomical for individuals not to pay protection money to the most powerful (and likely also most expensive) insurance company.
- sethg 16y agoAside from the problem of outright extortion, even the savviest financiers can underestimate low-probability risks (as the recent mortgage debacle shows). You would have cycles of price wars among insurers trying to attract customers by lowering premiums, until one larger-than-expected crime wave (or even a hiccup in the bond market) leaving major issuers unable to pay out their claims.
- zyb09 16y agoThey are just pointing out, that if this had happened somewhere else it would been much more devastating and that Japan was good prepared for this. So I don't really know why you're complaining about the article.
- jakegottlieb 16y agoLook at the laws of Hammurabbi or Moses, the ancients even knew this. Building codes are an important part of developed society and this situation would have been significantly worse without a stringent set of codes.
- uvdiv 16y agoThere's a qualitative difference between a law that mandates an action after something goes wrong (tort?), and a law that mandates an action before anything goes wrong, in order to prevent it from going wrong (most regulation). This is a critical difference to libertarian types: (as I understand) they advocate tort laws -- you are liable for the damage and injury you cause; but not most regulation -- government mandates actions to prevent you from causing damage or injury. Building codes are the latter. So I disagree with your analogy with the Hammurabi laws. I looked up the text: "If a builder build a house for some one, and does not construct it properly, and the house which he built fall in and kill its owner, then that builder shall be put to death." "[...] If it ruin goods, he shall make compensation for all that has been ruined, and inasmuch as he did not construct properly this house which he built and it fell, he shall re-erect the house from his own means." http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/ancient/hamcode.html http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/ancient/hamcode.html It actually doesn't contain anything like a building code -- no regulation for how to build houses, what materials and methods can be used, what standards should be met. It is only tort: how you construct a building, government does not care, but it will hold you liable if it fails. This is a solidly "libertarian" type of law: uphold property rights, but do not intervene otherwise, and do not tell people how to do things.
- Semiapies 16y agoI'm not sure of the news aspect of this. Japan has a long history of damaging earthquakes and tsunamis, and they're famous for their preparations for the same. Someone needed column inches.
- masklinn 16y ago> I'm not sure of the news aspect of this. Japan has a long history of damaging earthquakes and tsunamis, and they're famous for their preparations for the same. Yet they still "needed" the Great Hanshin Earthquake 16 years ago to fix numerous issues, especially in disaster planning, prevention and response, and in infrastructure management.
- Semiapies 16y agoAnd "16 years ago" makes it news how? How does that reform invalidate that modern Japan has been doing far more in terms of earthquake-related preparedness for decades than other countries?
- ffffruit 16y agoI find the comparison with SE Asia rather poor with regards to investment as I've been to Sri Lanka and the amount of money that is available for basic infrastructure, let alone anti-tsunami barricades, is negligible compared to Japan unfortunately.
- hinathan 16y agoFrom the article: "unlike Southeast Asians, many of whom died in the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami because they lingered near the coast despite clear warnings to flee" Interesting way to put it (implying that the issue was behavioral/cultural rather than one of engineering)
- ffffruit 16y agoI would think it was part engineering as they probably did not have, and do not seem to have now, any sort of alarming system in place. (at least not at the coastal places I visited)
- mc32 16y agoI think they were referring to the annual drills institutionalized in Japan. From the drills conducted annually, people knew how to react to disasters, whereas people who don't experience drills (in, say SEA) ignored the warnings or didn't know how to react since they had no reference.
- blntechie 16y agoMost South and SE asians didn't even knew the word tsunami before 2004 December 26, including me. There was no proper alert system, awareness or knowledge of the impact at that time and most were caught surprised. Japan was much better prepared because they have been facing this so long. Blaming this as a behavioural/cultural thing is ridiculous. I would bet that all the South and SE asian countries are better prepared for the next tsunami. We have been already through multiple tsunami warnings from then which did the job pretty well.
- ollysb 16y ago"Multimedia" seems like such a quaint term now.
- Hovertruck 16y agoThe irony is that this is the top item on reddit right now: http://i.imgur.com/eGSKJ.jpg http://i.imgur.com/eGSKJ.jpg
- pclark 16y agoI don't get it? Why wouldn't you read that?
- Hovertruck 16y agoIt means to say that no such article will exist, so you can't read it.
- AlexC04 16y agoIndeed. I'd imagine that the image of the tweet on Reddit was seen by someone at NYT then created with the hopes of pulling viewers because it was clearly a hot button topic. The opposite of a self-fulfilling prophecy. Journalists look to Reddit to see what people are interested in, write the article, point back to self. Reap rewards. Right? It's the content production business after all, just makes good business sense.
- solson 16y agoI'm not sure I understand the point here. Is it that strict government regulation saves lives? If so, yes I suppose that could be true. Fewer people would die in traffic accidents if we had a stoplight on every corner, we had to drive Sherman Tanks, and the speed limit was 20MPH. The problem is we'd be way less productive and we'd be much poorer. If China had Japan's strict building codes from 1980 to present, China's economic growth would have been far slower, but in an earthquake, more people may die in China. Is that a good thing or bad thing? Over the last 20 years, strong economic growth in China has likely saved far more lives than strict building codes may have saved. But that is too complex to get into here. Also note Japan's poor economic growth during over the last 10-20 years. Are some people in Japan better off because of strict building codes? Yes, no doubt. Is everyone in Japan better off due to strict building code? much harder to say.
- brown9-2 16y agoI'm not sure that this article has much of a point beyond what is on the surface, or that it is necessarily making an argument for or against regulation based on economic principles. The article's sole goal seems to be to help explain how a country with a large history of Earthquake experience has learned from it's history, and how the lessons and how they applied to their building structure helps explain how they might be able to deal with an 8.9 magnitude earthquake much better and with greater loss of life than if this earthquake had struck somewhere else. I don't think there is a secret meaning in every New York Times article.
- solson 16y agoSo all the people voting for this title on Reddit and Hacker News aren't making any statement on strict government regulation, they merely find it interesting that the Japanese have learned from their history?
- gloob 16y agoPerhaps I'm misreading you, but you seem to be fishing for a specific answer. Is that the case? If so, why?
- orenmazor 16y agoI dont have a nytimes account. not even readability can save me here.
- eli 16y agobugmenot.com can probably help. Or you can just sign up; it's free.
- apike 16y agoCopy the title of the article and paste it into Google. The link from Google will always return the full article.
- _delirium 16y agoOnly the first page of the full article, unfortunately; I hit the login wall when I try to go to page 2.
- NZ_Matt 16y agoThe media are failing to point out that the Earthquake was 200+km offshore. There is a huge difference between an 8.9M 200km offshore and an 8.9M directly below a city. The ground motions recorded were relatively low in the cities and not very destructive. PGV (peak ground velocity) is a more accurate way to estimate the strain put on infrastructure. This shakemap shows that the intensity was relatively low: http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/shakemap/global/shake/c0001xgp http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/shakemap/global/shake... Many people said the same thing about building codes after the 7.1 in Christchurch last September. That earthquake was 40km away from the city. Cruelly the 6.3 on Feb 22nd with its epicenter directly below the City showed the difference that proximity to the epicenter makes. Proximity to the epicenter and PGV is almost more important than magnitude when accessing how well buildings performed.
- icarus_drowning 16y agoThis particular article actually seems to focus more on the seawalls designed to protect from the resultant tsunami.
- dmm 16y agoEverything has a cost and these costs are not always obvious. Government regulations like building codes and food safety generally ensure that buildings are safe and food is not contaminated, but they do so by defining acceptable things. There are perfectly safe building designs which would never pass building codes. This is a huge barrier to innovation. To be legally allowed to construct something that is not explicitly allowed by codes can require years and lots of money to hire engineers and lawyers. Also, who writes these building codes? It's engineers employed by the construction and construction material industries. They have a perspective shaped by the status quo. So the codes require specific materials and techniques. Codes also empower lots of unelected officals. A food safety inspector can shut down your plant and force you to throw away all of your products, with absolutely no form of appeal. I don't really mind building codes. I just wish there were some objective criteria that designs went through. For example, if you could demonstrate your building can withstand an earthquake, regardless of it's method of construction, it's permissible. If you could demonstrate your food was not contaminated with bacteria, etc. If you give a damn about any of this check out Mike Ohler's "The Fifty Dollar and Up Underground House Book" for the evils of building codes and Joel Salatin's "Everything I want to do is illegal" for food regulations.
- jlangenauer 16y agoThe building codes are the objective criteria. Most government building codes I've seen will require compliance with certain engineering standards, and the engineering standards themselves will say things like "a building built in this part of the country must be able to withstand x ms-2 in vertical acceleration and y ms-2 in lateral acceleration". It doesn't get any more objective than that.
- dmm 16y agoWell... kind of. There is a whole lot of shit like this: 705.1 General. Each portion of a building separated by one or more fire walls that comply with the provisions of this section shall be considered a separate building. The extent and location of such fire walls shall provide a complete separation. Where a fire wall also separates groups that are required to be separated by a fire barrier wall, the most restrictive requirements of each separation shall apply. Fire walls located on property lines shall also comply with Section 503.2. Such fire walls (party walls) shall be constructed without openings. (from the 2000 ICC building codes) It is specifying a specific arrangement of firewalls. What if I can make buildings even safer with nothing resembling firewalls? It's not nearly as clear cut or simple as "building must be able to withstand x forces". Plus it's not as though housing contractors actually build experimental buildings in earthquake test facilities to see if they comply. What they do is screw a bunch of prefabricated pieces together. All of which are accepted by the inspectors as following the codes. The result is a monoculture which is highly reluctant to accept new ideas. Remember that building boards consist of people from the construction industries, they people who make and use these materials. The people who make the decisions on whether your buildings are unelected boards who have investments in the status quo. They can force you to spend 100s of thousands in engineering fees to convince them that your design is safe enough for you to live in.
- jakegottlieb 16y ago25 people have died in China and they didn't receive the bulk of the destruction. This attests to Japan's high end building codes.
- blahblahblah 16y agoIt sounds like the strict building codes served them well for residential housing and commercial spaces. However, it looks like the engineering standards for their nuclear reactors could stand to be a little more strict (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/42025882/ns/world_news-asiapacific/ http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/42025882/ns/world_news-asiapacif...). Perhaps the news article is overly sensational, but I can't help but wonder, "Why are we even talking about the possibility of a meltdown in 2011?" Shouldn't loss of reactor cooling capability result in an automatic reactor shutdown? Wasn't the lesson of the Three Mile Island accident that you should build your reactor so that the default thing that happens when you lose power (and therefore lose cooling capability) is that the control rods drop via gravity and stop the reaction? Any nuclear engineers out there care to comment on the design of Japan's reactors?
- foobarbazetc 16y agoPlease don't spread misinformation about this. The reactors stopped automatically, but you still have to cool them. They ran out of diesel, so they're getting mobile power units in to cool the rest. They're not morons.
- blahblahblah 16y agoSo, basically, MSNBC did a crappy job of writing their article -- it should have explicitly stated that a shutdown happened...
- foobarbazetc 16y agoYeah, but every news agency is. The BBC had a "live feed" of a huge blazing fire, and the caption was "Government declares Nuclear Emergency". The fire was at a natural gas storage tank... I don't know if these news agencies like stoking mass panic, but you need to be a little sceptical about reporting in the media about "contentious" issues like nuclear power. Here's the IAEA post about the current issue: http://www.iaea.org/press/?p=1133 http://www.iaea.org/press/?p=1133 It's standard procedure in these situations to evacuate a 3km radius from the plant, just in case. If the situation gets slightly more... interesting (as in, they need to vent some steam), they evacuate 10km. TL;DR: Let's wait and see what happens before declaring that Japan is about to be annihilated by nuclear fallout. Edit: here's the current status of each reactor: http://www.tepco.co.jp/en/press/corp-com/release/11031207-e.html http://www.tepco.co.jp/en/press/corp-com/release/11031207-e.... http://www.tepco.co.jp/en/press/corp-com/release/11031212-e.html http://www.tepco.co.jp/en/press/corp-com/release/11031212-e.... http://www.tepco.co.jp/en/press/corp-com/release/11031213-e.html http://www.tepco.co.jp/en/press/corp-com/release/11031213-e.... http://www.tepco.co.jp/en/press/corp-com/release/11031214-e.html http://www.tepco.co.jp/en/press/corp-com/release/11031214-e.... I.e., all shut down. Need cooling. Pressure being vented in the Daiichi reactor.
- bluedanieru 16y agoWhen people talk about the America's crumbling infrastructure, it isn't just potholes folks.
- power78 16y agoPlease don't get mad at this, but the reason I love hackernews is because its not like reddit has become: there are no silly posts or posts that don't relate to technology and programming. This post seems necessary for reddit, but not for hacker news. Please don't let this community change!
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]