From: jcliu@euler.Berkeley.EDU (James C. Liu - Nucl. Engin. UC Berkeley)
Subject: Typhoons vs. Hurricanes (was Re: More Earthquakes
Organization: University of California at Berkeley
Date: Fri, 22 Jan 1993 04:21:51 GMT

In article <1993Jan21.002248.18866@schbbs.mot.com> F10218@maccvm.corp.mot.com 
(Nick Yanagisawa) writes:

  >The Hurrican Andrew was strong, but most of the damages were results of
  >poor worksmanship than anything else.  Example: There were two houses
  >next to each other.  One cost more than $500,000 and other cost much
  >less.  The expensive house were built without supervision of the house
  >owner and other one was supervise by the owner.  Guess which one blew up?

I wouldn't be so quick to blame failure due to poor workmanship.  I've
seen the construction of various houses in Shinagawa and the workers
they don't do things any better than in America, only they sure are
slow.  It's often easy for the press and the public to get confused with
failure modes of houses in large storms...especially when there may be
lawsuits just waiting to happen.

  >The roof on the expensive house was almost all gone and furnitures were
  >all over the house.  The not so expensive house only suffer some minor
  >damages to the exterior of the house.  According to the investgations
  >conducted by local newspaper companies (Sun-Sentinel and Miami Herald),
  >they found a lot of defects, short cuts, improper nailing of roof, etc.

In major storms of this nature, local air velocity and pressure may 
vary a lot.  Also, a house tends to fail in high velocity winds due
to sudden pressure differential build-up between inside and outside.
That is why a house has a better chance of surviving a tornado if the
doors and windows are left open.  It is likely that the more expensive
house was bigger, and better sealed, even though it was built to the
same specs that the cheaper house was built to.  Pressure, force per
unit area, generates more force, if you have a bigger area.

  >It seems to me that a lot of builders/carpenters are the people who do
  >not have a "real" job, have no skills or brains (did not graduate high
  >school), or drifters (people who move constantly from city to city).
  >I don't think many of them went through the apprenticeship, they just
  >became builders/carpenters somehow.  In Japan, people have to go through
  >long period of aprrenticeship before they are consider builders/capenters
  >Agree?

Pretty damned arrogant to say that these people are the losers...
You ever try to smooth a poured concrete sidewalk with a simple 2
by 4?  I've done electrical work, plumbing, and construction and
concrete work but I never could smooth concrete with a 2 x 4.  It was
a bonehead, high school dropout that finally taught me the right way,
and he wasn't even 25 at the time.  I think your intent was to imply
that American construction workers don't go through an apprencticeship.
Very wrong.  Union workers go through apprenticeship before becoming
journeymen, which you seem to call drifters...:-).  And non union
workers learn on the job, probably just like in Japan.  You need to
learn some respect for people who work in laboring jobs.  They define
the true meaning of hard work.

Jaa, James
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