[CEUS-earthquake-hazards] Wang comment on Krinitszky and Jacob

[jacob at ldeo.columbia.edu]

Dear Zhenming:

A good reference to your arguments would be:

http://www.uky.edu/KGS/geologichazards/Comment_Klugel.pdf

with which some of us discussants are familiar, but don't necessarily agree on
all the points you make in it.

So - we could take either your preferences as "THE TRUTH", or Ellis'; or all the
seismologists' and engineers', yours included, and look at them as a
distribution. That's what SSHAC does, although I know you don't like SSHAC and
I have some "scientific" reservations about such procedures too. But the SSHAC
and similar procedures are not there to come to a better "scientific truth".
They are socially engineered procedures to come to a result when diverging
opinions in the expert community exist, and when structures and the built
environment that society relies on and demands, need to be designed and built to
a common standard.

Otherwise those that conform with the standard are unfairly burdened to bail out
(via tax-payer paid FEMA disaster assistance) the states and communities that
don't conform to the same standards.

I guess we just have to live with the fact that you like your "TRUTH" to be the
better truth, if not the only truth. That is an individual scientist's
prerogative. But it does not help society to come to a consesus standard.

I would like to point out to you that, to the best of my memory, each state or
community that adopts a seismic standard, that significantly deviates from the
FEMA recommended NEHRP (in the form of IBC, adopted as a reference code by
local regulatory powers) will have to go through an approval process that makes
this community's code FEMA-certified. If it does not meet this federal approval
process, the state or community may fail to become eligible to federal
earthquake disaster relief funds. So you should not take lightly your
insistance on lower standards (even if you were scientifically "right") that
make your state (and similar like-minded communities) uneligible for federal
relief funds after an earthquake. Part of the argument is that the federal
funds used for rebuilding should conform to the federal standards, or you are
not entitled to the federal money. We had to go through this process for the
first version of the NYC Building code. But recently NYC switched to IBC, so
that almost automatically has federal approval, unless the local community
insists on "substantial" exemptions and modifications from IBC reference code.

Best
Klaus





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