0:00:01.000,0:00:04.000
I learned about the Haiti earthquake by Skype.

0:00:04.000,0:00:07.000
My wife sent me a message,

0:00:07.000,0:00:09.000
"Whoa, earthquake,"

0:00:09.000,0:00:12.000
and then disappeared for 25 minutes.

0:00:13.000,0:00:16.000
It was 25 minutes of absolute terror

0:00:16.000,0:00:20.000
that thousands of people across the U.S. felt.

0:00:21.000,0:00:24.000
I was afraid of a tsunami;

0:00:24.000,0:00:26.000
what I didn't realize

0:00:26.000,0:00:29.000
was there was a greater terror in Haiti,

0:00:29.000,0:00:32.000
and that was building collapse.

0:00:32.000,0:00:34.000
We've all seen the photos

0:00:34.000,0:00:37.000
of the collapsed buildings in Haiti.

0:00:37.000,0:00:39.000
These are shots my wife took

0:00:39.000,0:00:41.000
a couple days after the quake,

0:00:41.000,0:00:44.000
while I was making my way through the D.R. into the country.

0:00:45.000,0:00:47.000
This is the national palace --

0:00:47.000,0:00:50.000
the equivalent of the White House.

0:00:50.000,0:00:53.000
This is the largest supermarket in the Caribbean

0:00:53.000,0:00:56.000
at peak shopping time.

0:00:58.000,0:01:00.000
This is a nurses' college --

0:01:00.000,0:01:03.000
there are 300 nurses studying.

0:01:04.000,0:01:06.000
The general hospital right next door

0:01:06.000,0:01:09.000
emerged largely unscathed.

0:01:09.000,0:01:12.000
This is the Ministry of Economics and Finance.

0:01:15.000,0:01:17.000
We have all heard

0:01:17.000,0:01:20.000
about the tremendous human loss

0:01:20.000,0:01:22.000
in the earthquake in Haiti,

0:01:22.000,0:01:25.000
but we haven't heard enough

0:01:25.000,0:01:28.000
about why all those lives were lost.

0:01:28.000,0:01:30.000
We haven't heard about

0:01:30.000,0:01:33.000
why the buildings failed.

0:01:33.000,0:01:35.000
After all, it was the buildings,

0:01:35.000,0:01:37.000
not the earthquake,

0:01:37.000,0:01:40.000
that killed 220,000 people,

0:01:40.000,0:01:43.000
that injured 330,000,

0:01:43.000,0:01:48.000
that displaced 1.3 million people,

0:01:49.000,0:01:51.000
that cut off food

0:01:51.000,0:01:53.000
and water and supplies

0:01:53.000,0:01:56.000
for an entire nation.

0:01:56.000,0:02:01.000
This is the largest metropolitan-area disaster

0:02:01.000,0:02:04.000
in decades,

0:02:04.000,0:02:07.000
and it was not a natural disaster --

0:02:07.000,0:02:10.000
it was a disaster of engineering.

0:02:10.000,0:02:12.000
AIDG has worked in Haiti

0:02:12.000,0:02:14.000
since 2007,

0:02:14.000,0:02:16.000
providing engineering and business support

0:02:16.000,0:02:18.000
to small businesses.

0:02:18.000,0:02:22.000
And after the quake, we started bringing in earthquake engineers

0:02:22.000,0:02:24.000
to figure out why the buildings collapsed,

0:02:24.000,0:02:27.000
to examine what was safe and what wasn't.

0:02:27.000,0:02:30.000
Working with MINUSTAH,

0:02:30.000,0:02:32.000
which is the U.N. mission in Haiti,

0:02:32.000,0:02:34.000
with the Ministry of Public Works,

0:02:34.000,0:02:36.000
with different NGOs,

0:02:36.000,0:02:39.000
we inspected over 1,500 buildings.

0:02:40.000,0:02:42.000
We inspected schools

0:02:42.000,0:02:44.000
and private residencies.

0:02:44.000,0:02:46.000
We inspected medical centers

0:02:46.000,0:02:48.000
and food warehouses.

0:02:48.000,0:02:50.000
We inspected government buildings.

0:02:50.000,0:02:52.000
This is the Ministry of Justice.

0:02:52.000,0:02:54.000
Behind that door

0:02:54.000,0:02:57.000
is the National Judicial Archives.

0:02:57.000,0:02:59.000
The fellow in the door, Andre Filitrault --

0:02:59.000,0:03:01.000
who's the director

0:03:01.000,0:03:05.000
of the Center for Interdisciplinary Earthquake Engineering Research

0:03:05.000,0:03:08.000
at the University of Buffalo --

0:03:08.000,0:03:10.000
was examining it to see if it was safe

0:03:10.000,0:03:12.000
to recover the archives.

0:03:12.000,0:03:14.000
Andre told me,

0:03:14.000,0:03:16.000
after seeing these buildings fail

0:03:16.000,0:03:19.000
again and again in the same way,

0:03:19.000,0:03:22.000
that there is no new research here.

0:03:22.000,0:03:25.000
There is nothing here that we don't know.

0:03:25.000,0:03:28.000
The failure points were the same:

0:03:28.000,0:03:31.000
walls and slabs not tied properly into columns --

0:03:31.000,0:03:34.000
that's a roof slab hanging off the building --

0:03:36.000,0:03:38.000
cantilevered structures,

0:03:38.000,0:03:40.000
or structures that were asymmetric,

0:03:40.000,0:03:42.000
that shook violently and came down,

0:03:44.000,0:03:46.000
poor building materials,

0:03:46.000,0:03:48.000
not enough concrete,

0:03:48.000,0:03:51.000
not enough compression in the blocks,

0:03:52.000,0:03:54.000
rebar that was smooth,

0:03:54.000,0:03:57.000
rebar that was exposed to the weather and had rusted away.

0:03:57.000,0:04:00.000
Now there's a solution

0:04:00.000,0:04:02.000
to all these problems.

0:04:02.000,0:04:05.000
And we know how to build properly.

0:04:05.000,0:04:08.000
The proof of this came in Chile,

0:04:08.000,0:04:11.000
almost a month later,

0:04:11.000,0:04:14.000
when 8.8 magnitude earthquake

0:04:15.000,0:04:17.000
hit Chile.

0:04:17.000,0:04:19.000
That is 500 times

0:04:19.000,0:04:21.000
the power of the 7.0

0:04:21.000,0:04:24.000
that hit Port-au-Prince --

0:04:24.000,0:04:26.000
500 times the power,

0:04:26.000,0:04:29.000
yet only under a thousand casualties.

0:04:31.000,0:04:33.000
Adjusted for population density,

0:04:33.000,0:04:35.000
that is less than one percent

0:04:35.000,0:04:38.000
of the impact of the Haitian quake.

0:04:39.000,0:04:41.000
What was the difference

0:04:41.000,0:04:44.000
between Chile and Haiti?

0:04:44.000,0:04:46.000
Seismic standards

0:04:46.000,0:04:49.000
and confined masonry,

0:04:49.000,0:04:51.000
where the building acts as a whole --

0:04:51.000,0:04:53.000
walls and columns

0:04:53.000,0:04:55.000
and roofs and slabs

0:04:55.000,0:04:58.000
tied together to support each other --

0:04:58.000,0:05:02.000
instead of breaking off into separate members and failing.

0:05:03.000,0:05:06.000
If you look at this building in Chile,

0:05:06.000,0:05:08.000
it's ripped in half,

0:05:08.000,0:05:11.000
but it's not a pile of rubble.

0:05:12.000,0:05:14.000
Chileans have been building with confined masonry

0:05:14.000,0:05:16.000
for decades.

0:05:17.000,0:05:21.000
Right now, AIDG is working with KPFF Consulting Engineers,

0:05:21.000,0:05:23.000
Architecture for Humanity,

0:05:23.000,0:05:26.000
to bring more confined masonry training

0:05:26.000,0:05:28.000
into Haiti.

0:05:30.000,0:05:32.000
This is Xantus Daniel;

0:05:32.000,0:05:34.000
he's a mason,

0:05:34.000,0:05:37.000
just a general construction worker, not a foreman,

0:05:37.000,0:05:39.000
who took one of our trainings.

0:05:39.000,0:05:42.000
On his last job he was working with his boss,

0:05:42.000,0:05:45.000
and they started pouring the columns wrong.

0:05:45.000,0:05:47.000
He took his boss aside,

0:05:47.000,0:05:50.000
and he showed him the materials on confined masonry.

0:05:50.000,0:05:53.000
He showed him, "You know, we don't have to do this wrong.

0:05:53.000,0:05:55.000
It won't cost us any more

0:05:55.000,0:05:58.000
to do it the right way."

0:05:58.000,0:06:00.000
And they redid that building.

0:06:00.000,0:06:02.000
They tied the rebar right,

0:06:02.000,0:06:04.000
they poured the columns right,

0:06:04.000,0:06:06.000
and that building will be safe.

0:06:06.000,0:06:08.000
And every building

0:06:08.000,0:06:10.000
that they build going forward

0:06:10.000,0:06:12.000
will be safe.

0:06:13.000,0:06:15.000
To make sure these buildings are safe,

0:06:15.000,0:06:18.000
it's not going to take policy --

0:06:18.000,0:06:20.000
it's going to take reaching out

0:06:20.000,0:06:23.000
to the masons on the ground

0:06:23.000,0:06:26.000
and helping them learn the proper techniques.

0:06:28.000,0:06:30.000
Now there are many groups doing this.

0:06:30.000,0:06:32.000
And the fellow in the vest there,

0:06:32.000,0:06:34.000
Craig Toten,

0:06:34.000,0:06:36.000
he has pushed forward

0:06:36.000,0:06:39.000
to get documentation out to all the groups that are doing this.

0:06:40.000,0:06:42.000
Through Haiti Rewired,

0:06:42.000,0:06:45.000
through Build Change, Architecture for Humanity,

0:06:45.000,0:06:47.000
AIDG,

0:06:47.000,0:06:49.000
there is the possibility

0:06:49.000,0:06:52.000
to reach out

0:06:52.000,0:06:55.000
to 30,000 -- 40,000 masons

0:06:55.000,0:06:57.000
across the country

0:06:57.000,0:07:00.000
and create a movement of proper building.

0:07:02.000,0:07:04.000
If you reach out to the people on the ground

0:07:04.000,0:07:06.000
in this collaborative way

0:07:06.000,0:07:09.000
it's extremely affordable.

0:07:09.000,0:07:13.000
For the billions spent on reconstruction,

0:07:13.000,0:07:15.000
you can train masons

0:07:15.000,0:07:17.000
for dollars on every house

0:07:17.000,0:07:20.000
that they end up building over their lifetime.

0:07:22.000,0:07:24.000
Ultimately, there are two ways

0:07:24.000,0:07:26.000
that you can rebuild Haiti;

0:07:26.000,0:07:28.000
the way at the top

0:07:28.000,0:07:31.000
is the way that Haiti's been building for decades.

0:07:31.000,0:07:33.000
The way at the top

0:07:33.000,0:07:35.000
is a poorly constructed building

0:07:35.000,0:07:37.000
that will fail.

0:07:37.000,0:07:40.000
The way at the bottom is a confined masonry building,

0:07:40.000,0:07:42.000
where the walls are tied together,

0:07:42.000,0:07:44.000
the building is symmetric,

0:07:44.000,0:07:47.000
and it will stand up to an earthquake.

0:07:47.000,0:07:49.000
For all the disaster,

0:07:49.000,0:07:52.000
there is an opportunity here

0:07:52.000,0:07:54.000
to build better houses

0:07:54.000,0:07:56.000
for the next generation,

0:07:56.000,0:07:59.000
so that when the next earthquake hits,

0:07:59.000,0:08:01.000
it is a disaster --

0:08:01.000,0:08:03.000
but not a tragedy.

0:08:04.000,0:08:08.000
(Applause)