Supercourse PPT: Lec13051

Public Health Consequences of Earthquakes. Part II.

Eric K. Noji

Studies of the 1980 earthquake in Campania-Irpinia, Italy (111), the 1976 earthquake in Tangshan, China (112), the 1988 earthquake in Armenia (33), and the 1990 earthquake in the Philippines (66) show that the proportion of trapped people found alive declined as the duration of entrapment increased. In the Italian study, a survey of 3,619 survivors showed 1) that 93% of those who were trapped and survived were extricated within the first 24 hours and 2) that 95% of the deaths recorded occurred while the victims were still trapped in rubble (111). Estimates of the survivability of victims buried under collapsed earthen buildings in Turkey and China indicate that within 2 to 6 hours less than 50% of those buried are still alive (82). Although we cannot determine whether a trapped person died immediately or survived for some time under the debris, we can safely assume that more people would be saved if they were extricated sooner. As suggested by these data, teams with specialized expertise in areas such as search and rescue and on-site resuscitation and medical first aid arriving more than a couple of days after an earthquake's impact are unlikely to make much difference in the overall death toll of a large earthquake (91).