Edit: 5/18/08 - Please read the comment, use your own common sense.
I received this from a friend this morning, pass it on.
Even if you don’t live in an earthquake zone, you may visit or travel through an area that is subject to earthquakes! This is info you will certainly want to share as well.
My name is Doug Copp. I am the Rescue Chief and Disaster Manager of the American Rescue Team International (ARTI), the world’s most experienced rescue team. The information in this article will save lives in an earthquake.
I have crawled inside 875 collapsed buildings, worked with rescue teams from 60 countries, founded rescue teams in several countries, and I am a member of many rescue teams from many countries. I was the United Nations expert in Disaster Mitigation for two years. I have worked at every major disaster in the world since 1985, except for simultaneous disasters.
In 1996 we made a film that proved my survival methodology to be correct.
The Turkish Federal Government, City of Istanbul, University of Istanbul Case Productions and ARTI cooperated to film this practical, scientific test.
We collapsed a school and a home with 20 mannequins inside. Ten mannequins did ‘duck and cover,’ and ten mannequins I used in my ‘triangle of life’ survival method. After the simulated earthquake collapse we crawled through the rubble and entered the building to film and document the results. The film, in which I practiced my survival techniques under directly observable, scientific conditions, relevant to building collapse, showed there would have been zero percent survival for those doing duck and cover. There would likely have been 100 percent survivability for people using my method of the ‘triangle of life.’ This film has been seen by millions of viewers on television in Turkey and the rest of Europe , and it was seen in the US , Canada and Latin America on the TV program Real TV.
The first building I ever crawled inside of was a school in Mexico City during the 1985 earthquake. Every child was under their desk. Every child was crushed to the thickness of their bones. They could have survived by lying down next to their desks in the aisles. It was obscene, unnecessary and I wondered why the children were not in the aisles. I didn’t at the time know that the children were told to hide under something.
Simply stated, when buildings collapse, the weight of the ceilings falling upon the objects or furniture inside crushes these objects, leaving a space or void next to them. This space is what I call the ‘triangle of life’. The larger the object, the stronger, and the less it will compact.
The less the object compacts, the larger the void, the greater the probability that the person who is using this void for safety will not be injured. The next time you watch collapsed buildings on television, count the ‘triangles’ you see formed. They are everywhere. It is the most common shape, you will see, in a collapsed building. They are everywhere.
TEN TIPS FOR EARTHQUAKE SAFETY
1) Most everyone who simply ‘ducks and covers’ when buildings collapse are crushed to death. People who get under objects, like desks or cars, are crushed.
2) Cats, dogs and babies often naturally curl up in the fetal position. You should too in an earthquake. It is a natural safety/survival instinct. You can survive in a smaller void. Get next to an object, next to a sofa, next to a large bulky object that will compress slightly but leave a void next to it.
3) Wooden buildings are the safest type of construction to be in during an earthquake. Wood is flexible and moves with the force of the earthquake. If the wooden building does collapse, large survival voids are created. Also, the wooden building has less concentrated, crushing weight. Brick buildings will break into individual bricks. Bricks will cause many injuries but less squashed bodies than concrete slabs.
4) If you are in bed during the night and an earthquake occurs, simply roll off the bed. A safe void will exist around the bed. Hotels can achieve a much greater survival rate in earthquakes, simply by posting a sign on the back of the door of every room telling occupants to lie down on the floor, next to the bottom of the bed during an earthquake.
5) If an earthquake happens and you cannot easily escape by getting out the door or window, then lie down and curl up in the fetal position next to a sofa, or large chair.
6) Most everyone who gets under a doorway when buildings collapse is killed. How? If you stand under a doorway and the doorjamb falls forward or backward you will be crushed by the ceiling above. If the door jam falls sideways you will be cut in half by the doorway. In either case, you will be killed!
7) Never go to the stairs. The stairs have a different ‘moment of frequency’(they swing separately from the main part of the building). The stairs and remainder of the building continuously bump into each other until structural failure of the stairs takes place. The people who get on stairs before they fail are chopped up by the stair treads - horribly mutilated. Even if the building doesn’t collapse, stay away from the stairs. The stairs are a likely part of the building to be damaged. Even if the stairs are not collapsed by the earthquake, they may collapse later when overloaded by fleeing people. They should always be checked for safety, even when the rest of the building is not damaged.
Get Near the Outer Walls Of Buildings Or Outside Of Them If Possible - It is much better to be near the outside of the building rather than the interior. The farther inside you are from the outside perimeter of the building the greater the probability that your escape route will be blocked.
9) People inside of their vehicles are crushed when the road above falls in an earthquake and crushes their vehicles; which is exactly what happened with the slabs between the decks of the Nimitz Freeway. The victims of the San Francisco earthquake all stayed inside of their vehicles. They were all killed. They could have easily survived by getting out and sitting or lying next to their vehicles. Everyone killed would have survived if they had been able to get out of their cars and sit or lie next to them. All the crushed cars had voids 3 feet high next to them, except for the cars that had columns fall directly across them.
10) I discovered, while crawling inside of collapsed newspaper offices and other office with a lot of paper, paper does not compact. Large voids are found surrounding stacks of paper.
Read these too and judge them just as you would judge Doug Copp’s claims.
http://earthquake.usgs.gov/learning/faq.php?categoryID=6&faqID=141
http://www2.bpaonline.org/Emergencyprep/arc-on-doug-copp.html
http://www.snopes.com/inboxer/household/triangle.asp
http://www.earthquakecountry.info/dropcoverholdon/
Interesting information, but I think this is a bit too absolute a statement to make about how best to survive an earthquake - I can see the reasoning, but I also still feel that in my rickety little apartment building, one of the safest places is in a doorway at the end of a little hall that essentially forms a box (another sort of void) by virtue of the framework there.
It is important to have many different sources of information on this issue, so that one can make the best call for their situation. And nothing compares to having a plan!!
The “triangle of life” advice is based on the concept of the Survivable Void Space but makes several wrong assumptions: 1) buildings always collapse and crush all furniture inside; 2) residents can always anticipate how their building might collapse and anticipate the location of survivable void spaces; and 3) during strong shaking people can move to a desired location. Experts agree that in the rare case that a building collapses, residents inside will not be able to anticipate the location of void spaces nor move to them during the strong shaking before the collapse. Some other recommendations in the “triangle of life” email are also based on wrong assumptions and very hazardous. For example, the recommendation to get out of your car during an earthquake and lay down next to it assumes that there is always an elevated freeway above you that will fall and crush your car. Of course there are very few elevated freeways, and laying next to your car is very dangerous because the car can move and crush you. A compilation of rebuttals from many organizations to these alternative recommendations, as well as news articles about the controversy, is online at http://www.earthquakecountry.info/dropcoverholdon (on the sidebar of this page).
In conclusion, the “Drop, Cover and Hold On” protocol, when performed correctly with an awareness of your surroundings, remains the most effective single piece of advice that you can follow when an earthquake occurs. More detailed information about what to do during an earthquake can be found at http://www.earthquakecountry.info/roots/step5.html.