Amid the reconstruction of several cities and municipalities hit by the earthquake that shook the country 8 days ago, engineers’ guilds have begun to express concern about the way hundreds of houses, buildings, and other collapsed structures will be rebuilt.
President Abelardo De La Espriella has already announced that the reconstruction will cost more than 30 trillion pesos. And in several territories, governors and mayors have requested the creation of a materials bank so that citizens can start rebuilding the structures.
However, there is fear among experts about the so-called self-construction of homes that has already begun in some municipalities.
Higher budget
In an interview with EL TIEMPO’s Primer Plano news program, Yezid Alvarado, an expert in seismic resistance from the Javeriana University, stated that the billion-peso figure provided by the President for reconstruction could increase.
“We have a very significant debt and, for example, at the hospital level what we can see is that they require intervention, not necessarily derived from the earthquake, but also due to the improper management of public resources. So the valuation the President makes of the 30 trillion represents a lot of money, but it could be more”, Alvarado said.
He added that although the number of people who died or were injured by the earthquake is significant, the seismic resistance standards in some buildings prevented a tragedy of greater proportions.
But he noted that in areas like Chocó there are still self-built buildings or constructed without specialized personnel.
‘Without technical supervision’
Alvarado also said that initiatives to send construction materials to the areas most affected by the earthquake could generate more risks: “In Chocó we saw those initiatives to quickly put materials in people’s hands and without proper technical supervision, that can be complex.”
For his part, Juan Francisco Correal, an expert engineer from the University of Los Andes, said that during the reconstruction of the affected cities it is important to have specific knowledge in structural engineering.
“Decisions about habitability must be made. A visual assessment of the damage must be done and measures taken. This is important mainly because there may be not only aftershocks but structural failures,” the expert said.
He added: “At the Quibdó mayor’s office, they already showed us examples where some people were, for example, replacing some columns without any technical criteria based on donations from hardware stores.”
Risks in Bogotá
When engineer Alvarado was asked if Bogotá was prepared for an earthquake like the one that shook the western part of the country, he said that there were also alerts in the capital due to self-construction.
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“One might expect that here in Bogotá with these buildings, with good construction practices and good application of the standards, we should be in a positive scenario. But we must not hide that here in Bogotá we have a high percentage of self-construction and if that self-construction is not done responsibly, that’s where I think we could have quite a few problems”, he explained.
INVESTIGATIVE UNIT
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