Cedric Stephens High-rise, high risk
Kingston and other major towns, according to last Wednesday’s Gleaner, are currently undergoing the biggest construction boom since the 1990s. The planning authorities, in the face of demand for residential space in the capital and amid the limited number of large land lots, have revised the regulations.
The old rules about density and habitable rooms have been adjusted. These changes have allowed developers to build taller structures on relatively small lots. The crane index, which tracks the number of fixed cranes on construction sites and gives a simplified measure of the current state of the construction industry’s workload, for Kingston and St Andrew has never been higher.
The 17-storey Jamaica Pegasus hotel located on Knutsford Boulevard has long dominated the St Andrew skyline. It will soon be surpassed by 20-floor and 26-floor buildings that will be built nearby on Waterloo Avenue and Trafalgar Road, respectively. These are only two of the more notable high-rises.
In the United States, the National Fire Protection Association defines a high-rise as being higher than 75 feet (23 metres), or about seven stories. Most building engineers, inspectors, architects, and similar professionals define a high-rise as a building that is at least 75 feet tall.
The authors of ‘High-rise Buildings: Design, Analysis and Safety – An Overview’, write in The International Journal of Architectural Engineering Technology that “safety of tall buildings is the most important problem in construction. All the design codes and safety criteria should be practised during construction.”
The magnitude 7.8 earthquake and aftershock of magnitude 7.5 that struck Turkey and northern Syria on February 6, said the New York Times, are two of more than 70 quakes of magnitude 6.5 or higher recorded in the region since 1900. As of February 15, the death toll in both countries exceeded 40,000. Over one million buildings were damaged or destroyed.
Given its history and the fact Turkey is located in one of the most earthquake-prone regions in the world, why was this earthquake so devastating? Shouldn’t the buildings have been designed to minimise the loss of lives and damage? News reports and video images, on the other hand, showed new buildings collapsing like dominoes during the quake.
Scientific American, a popular science magazine, provided answers a few days ago. It reported on a recent interview with an earthquake expert, Ross Stein, chief executive officer of the catastrophe modelling company, Temblor. Stein suggested that non-compliance with design codes and safety considerations was ignored in Turkey.
“The number-one factor (in the prevention of deaths or property damage in earthquakes) is building quality. It just trumps everything else. Building quality is controlled by a building code and the enforcement of that code. Turkey went through the terrible 1999 Izmit earthquake, which killed (more than 15,000) people, so Turkey had modern building codes within a few years of that earthquake. So then you say, ‘Well, given that, why do buildings fail? Are these buildings older than 20 years ago? Or were the buildings built in a manner that was not properly reinforced?’
“After that Izmit earthquake, I was there. We were inspecting a factory. You build a strong building with reinforced concrete, which is the standard building material the world over. What you do is: You have rebar — you have these steel rods that are inside the columns and beams. And you concentrate the strength and the density of those at any corners, any junctions because that’s where the earthquake stress is going to be concentrated,” Stein said.
“So we were inside this failed manufacturing plant, and I could see there was a big crack at one of these joints, big enough that I could get my hand in to see how many reinforcing rods were in there. I put my hand in, and I pulled out a hunk of Styrofoam. The world would be a safer place if concrete was see-through. This is the problem: it’s too easy to cheat.”
Yusuf Selman Inanc, writing from Turkey, in the Middle East Eye, said that “even though Turkey has construction codes that meet current earthquake-engineering standards, they are too rarely enforced, explaining why thousands of buildings may have collapsed”. The government is also being blamed for granting zoning amnesties to property owners for non-compliance with building codes and standards.
Is Jamaica’s building industry and its regulatory infrastructure insulated from the problems that have recently become manifest in Turkey? Are there any lessons that we can learn from that country’s experiences given the ongoing high-rise construction boom?
Turkey is ranked as the 101 least corrupt nation out of 180 countries, according to the 2022 Corruption Perceptions Index reported by Transparency International. Jamaica, which is also located in a seismically active area, was ranked 69 for the same period.
The regulatory and other failures that were recently highlighted in the local securities industry and that contributed to the revamping of the supervisory architecture for deposit and non-deposit-taking institutions have, with few exceptions, shaken my confidence that these organs of state are performing the functions they were set up to undertake.
They will have to work much harder to regain my trust. Facta sunt potentiora verbis: Deeds are more powerful than words.
The folks at the Ministry of Finance & the Public Service pay close attention to what institutions like the International Monetary Fund and rating agencies say about the status of the local economy. Favourable assessments affect the interest rate that will be charged on the country’s debt.
On the other hand, unfavourable assessments about compliance with Jamaica’s building codes and doubts about the efficacy of the regulatory infrastructure by its overseas catastrophe reinsurers influence the availability and price of property insurance for all categories of consumers.
The folks at the local insurance regulator and their counterpart in Turkey appear to have overlooked these things.
– Cedric E. Stephens provides independent information and advice about the management of risks and insurance. For free information or counsel, write to: aegis@flowja.com or business@gleanerjm.com