Evening star., 1925-08-30
BY CARROLL BINDER.
Special Correspondence of The Star and the
Chicago Daily News.


KILAUEA CRATER, Hawaii
Processes of human Swarming must
be studied side by side with earth
processes if damages to life and prop
erty from volcanic forces are to be
minimized, in the opinion of Prof.
Thomas A. Jaggar. the noted volca-
nologist who has chosen this seismic
region as his laboratory.
THE volcanic forces of nature do
most of their damage to life and prop
erty by fire, as shown in the confia-
grations of st. Pierre, Kingston, San
Francisco. Yokohama and Toxic.
Fires arise in highly congested COM
munities full of infiammable material
and difficult to control. Prevent the
fires and half the battle against earth
disturbances is won. Add to this rea-
sonable provision to protect the COM
munity against fire and to restore
ravages of confiagration and reason
able readiness to meet the direct I'M
pact of natural forces and another
quarter is won. The remaining quar-
ter may be covered with a cont1agra-
ton surplus that is always Il pro
prietorship liability for we are in a
sense proprietors of the earth itself
and as such subject to certain risks =
America Poorly Equipped.
American cities, DIR. Jaggar believes,
are for the most part poorly prepared
10 withstand an earthquake shock.
Much of the construction is not fire
proof. The skyscrapers are not built
to withstand earthquake shocks of
great severity. nor would the water
pressure be sufficient to successfully
cope with a large number of fires in
such structures.
Congestion of the streets would re-
suit in heavy loss of life and would
interfere with firefighting. Especially
vigorous is Prof. Jaggar's condemna-
ton of the practice of parking auto
mobiles for hours and in some cities
for entire days in the congeSted sec
tions of cities in the earthquake .re
gion. Each one of these machines
has a tank of gasoline which will eN-
plode as did the machines in Toxic
during the recent earthquake, and
start a thousand fires in as many
parts of the city. Such a situation is
beyond the control of the best or
ganized fire department.
IF an earthquake of the severity OF
that which occurred in Charleston in
1886 were TO strike New York or Los
Angeles during high wind in dry
weather and the water mains were to
become broken, the United States
might provide the world with a catas
trophe fully equal to the Japanese hol-
ocaust which affected 100000 peo-
pie and caused from $1,000 900 900 to
$8, 600, 900 900 worth of property loss" 3"
Should Make Wide Preparations.
Protection against earthquake in
jury as seen by Prof. Jaggar should
include a fire department prepared to
fight a hundred fires at once. auxil-
iary water supply, pumps Independent
Of electrical control, devices for shut
ting off gas and electricity, devices for
safe housing of explosives or inf1am-
maheS. and roof tanks, automatic
Sprinklers, fire doors, fire escapes and
the like for those who work or live in
high buildings.
Experimentation must be continued
TO determine the best type Of earth
quake proof construction so that the
rigidity of buildings may be increased
and the natural period of vibration
shortened. Thus structures will not
fall into resonance with a slow earth
vibration that racks them to pieces.
The center of gravity should be kept
low by reducing the weight of roofs
and upper stories. If on soft ground
the foundation should be a slab Of
high tensile strength so that the
footingS cannot be pulled apart even
if the ground cracks.
For protecting contents against
earthquakes, 1t is quite possible that
some types of houses mounted on
large ball bearings with restraining
cups and springs may be perfected.
A building supported like sleeping
car, or big automobile equipped with
shock abSorberS, but with rectangu-
lar system of rolling trucks ready for
motion in any direction, yet damped
inn
would resist earthquakes almost per
fectly. If it's water pipes and electric
wires were coiled in a free chamber
without rigidity, the earth might
quake, the house stand still, and the
lead pipes give without breaking.
Big Works Suffer.
Railways. public works, communica-
ton systems, suffer when there is a
great convulsion of the earth, as
recent quakes in Montana demon
strated. Prof. Jaggar hopes that such
utilities will cooperate with other
agencies in the study of seismicity
and ways to cope with earth move
ments.
Instead of hushing up earthquake
talk Prof. Jaggar would have engi-
neers study the Japanese and other
CataStropheS to make available to the
rest of the world the lessons thereof
and to develop a technique of earth
quake protection. An American or
sanization, known as the engineering
economic foundation. is studying
earthquake hazards to ascertain just
such information, it was announced
recently. Members of the foundation
staff went to Santa Barbara right
after the earthquake to study the
relative capacity of different kinds of
construction. including water mains,
railway tracks and other structures
TO withstand vibration.
Prof. Jaggar made an exhaustive
study of the Toxic disaster. Asked
how that catastrophe might have
been minimized, he said:
Safeguards Needed.
There might have been % large
parks as refugees from panic. There
might have been wider streets. There
might have been local motorized fire
engines at 400 places ready to use the
Ganal waters for fighting fire. The
oil tanks and powder works might
have been designed to meet a big
earthquake. Heavy tile roofs might
have been forbidden years ago. There
might have been a delimited business
district, required TO use tire-resisting
masonry and to build no houses over
fire stories high. There might have
Deen an exterior 1dClOTS ulSlIlCI re-
quired to use fire doors, automatic
sprinklers, fire escapes and a certain
spacing of houses for operatives. A
Toxic suburban district where con-
ditions were sanitary and the spacing
vas good escaped the conflagration
which destroyed most of the city.
IF all this had been the situation
several blocks might have been
burned, several thousand people might
have been killed by earthquake and
the property losses would have been