ASCE's Post-Disaster Assessment Manual Will Save Heartache

摘要

When disasters challenge the limits of engineering, all too often death and destruction follow. That is because engineering is, in a basic sense, a set of protective disciplines that enable people to live and work safely in the presence of forces that would otherwise kill them. The American Society of Civil Engineers has long recognized its responsibility, as one of the nation's leading engineering societies, to try and answer the questions that arise when forces overtake engineered structures. ASCE regularly has been dispatching analysis teams of volunteer experts to disaster sites since 1889, when a poorly maintained dam impounding 20-million tons of water gave way during torrential rains and drove a 40-ft-tall, half-mile-wide wall of debris through Johnstown, Pa., wiping out four square miles of the town and killing 2,209 people in what The New York Times called "an engineering crime."