El geólogo Antonio Aretxabala propone señalar los puntos adecuados para la construcción en las ciudades de acuerdo con la sismicidad
Geologist Antonio Aretxabala proposes to point out suitable points for construction in the cities of agreement with seismicity.
The professor of the School of Architecture encourages the cultural and scientific promotion of cities located in geologically unstable areas.
"The urban distribution should be done from agreement to a'micro-zoning' of the cities, in which the appropriate points for each construction are indicated. Given the seismological knowledge that we have, obtaining the data is not expensive". This was indicated by the geologist Antonio Aretxabala, professor of Geotechnics and director technician of the laboratory of the School of Architecture of the University of Navarra. The expert made these statements to the EFE news agency on the occasion of his participation in the XV International Earthquake Engineering congress , held in Lisbon.
"It is a matter of common sense: hospitals should not be built in the most vulnerable points, but in safe areas," he said.
According to him,"practically no Spanish city has been built considering seismicity, and the history of our country is linked to it". In this sense, he recalled that in the last seven centuries there have been almost a dozen very destructive earthquakes in Spain, those of more than VIII Degrees intensity (Mercalli, MSK, etc.) and that some 3,600 seismic movements are registered every year.
Lack of citizen training
Professor Aretxabala pointed out that this lack of awareness on the part of the population was evident with the earthquake of 5.1 Degrees on the Richter scale that occurred in Lorca in 2011."Citizens, despite living in an area of known seismic activity, did not know how to react. They were unfamiliar with rules such as getting down on the ground, putting their hands behind their heads and getting into the fetal position, or trying to get under a table. This was not the case with the local population coming from countries such as Chile, where lessons are given at high school and drills are carried out," he said.
However, for Professor Aretxabala, the fact that a city is located in a geologically unstable area can also be an opportunity to give it a cultural and scientific boost: "This is what happened in the French town of Arette, which suffered a serious earthquake in 1967 and is home to a center for the study and knowledge dissemination of seismology".