蝶变1939:严格的建筑标准挽救千万人的生命

额外的钢筋加固、巨大的橡胶垫、嵌入式液压减震系统，这些隐藏在高层塔楼骨架中的神秘武器使得日本建筑跻身世界上最坚固的建筑之列。顺着日本的海岸线，到处可见海啸警告的标志，高耸的海堤和标记明显的逃生路线为人们在巨大水墙到临时提供了一定保护。

These precautions, along with earthquake and tsunami drills that are routine for every Japanese citizen, show why Japan is the best-prepared country in the world for the twin disasters of earthquake and tsunami — practices that undoubtedly saved lives, though the final death toll is unknown.

这些预防措施，还有地震和海啸演习对每个日本人来说都是家常便饭，这充分显示了日本是世界上应对海啸和地震双重灾难准备最充分的国家。虽然最后的死亡人数还不明，但这些措施毫无疑问地拯救了生命。

In Japan, where earthquakes are far more common than they are in the United States, the building codes have long been much more stringent on specific matters like how much a building may sway during a quake.

在日本，地震远比美国常见。建筑法则很早就对某些细节——比如地震时建筑摇摆的程度——做了更为严格的规定。

After the Kobe earthquake in 1995, which killed about 6,000 people and injured 26,000, Japan also put enormous resources into new research on protecting structures, as well as retrofitting the country’s older and more vulnerable structures. Japan has spent billions of dollars developing the most advanced technology against earthquakes and tsunamis.

1995年神户大地震，造成约6000人死亡，26000人受伤。从那之后，日本投入了巨大的财力研究新的保护建筑，以及老建筑、脆弱建筑的改造。日本已经在研发应对海啸和海啸的最先进的技术上投入了数十亿美元。

Japan has gone much further than the United States in outfitting new buildings with advanced devices called base isolation pads and energy dissipation units to dampen the ground’s shaking during an earthquake.

日本为新的的建筑装备了先进的设备，包括地基隔震垫和能量耗散单元，以减弱地震时地面的震动。在这一点上，日本比美国进步。

The isolation devices are essentially giant rubber-and-steel pads that are installed at the very bottom of the excavation for a building, which then simply sits on top of the pads. The dissipation units are built into a building’s structural skeleton. They are hydraulic cylinders that elongate and contract as the building sways, sapping the motion of energy.

隔离设备实际上就是安装在建筑物开挖时最底层的巨大的橡胶钢铁垫，建筑物就坐在这些垫子上面。耗散单元嵌入到了建筑的骨架中，它们就是液压的圆筒，可以伸长来限制建筑物的摇摆，逐渐耗散运动的能量。

Of course, nothing is entirely foolproof. Structural engineers monitoring the events from a distance cautioned that the death toll was likely to rise as more information became available. Dr. Jack Moehle, a structural engineer at the University of California, Berkeley, said that video of the disaster seemed to show that some older buildings had indeed collapsed.

当然，没有任何措施是万全的。在远处关注事件进展的结构工程师们警告说，随着更多信息的披露，死亡人数有可能继续上升。Jack Moehle博士，加州大学的结构工程师说，从灾难现场的视频看，有些老的建筑的确是倒了。

The country that gave the world the word tsunami, especially in the 1980s and 1990s, built concrete seawalls in many communities, some as high as 40 feet, which amounted to its first line of defense against the water. In some coastal towns, in the event of an earthquake, networks of sensors are set up to set off alarms in individual residences and automatically shut down floodgates to prevent waves from surging upriver.

这个发明了“海啸”这个单词的国家，在很多乡镇建造了混凝土的海堤，特别是在上世纪八十和九十年代，有些高达40英尺，这些海堤构成了他们的第一道防线。在有些沿海城镇，还建立起了传感器网络。当地震发生时，能够向居民家中发出警报并自动关闭闸门阻挡浪涌。

Critics of the seawalls say they are eyesores and bad for the environment. The seawalls, they say, can instill a false sense of security among coastal residents and discourage them from participating in regular evacuation drills. Moreover, by literally cutting residents’ visibility of the ocean, the seawalls reduce their ability to understand the sea by observing wave patterns, critics say.

Waves from Friday’s tsunami spilled over some seawalls in the affected areas. “The tsunami roared over embankments in Sendai city, washing cars, houses and farm equipment inland before reversing directions and carrying them out to sea,” according to a statement by a Japanese engineer, Kit Miyamoto, circulated by the American Society of Civil Engineers. “Flames shot from some of the houses, probably because of burst gas pipes.”

But Japan’s “massive public education program” could in the end have saved the most lives, said Rich Eisner, a retired tsunami preparedness expert who was attending a conference on the topic at the National Institute of Standards and Technology in Gaithersburg, Md., on Friday.

In one town, Ofunato, which was struck by a major tsunami in 1960, dozens of signs in Japanese and English mark escape routes, and emergency sirens are tested three times a day, Mr. Eisner said.

Eisner先生说，大船渡镇1960年曾经经历了一次巨大的海啸，现在，许多日英标记的标志牌清晰地指出了逃生线路，紧急警报三天便测试一次。

Initial reports from Ofunato on Friday suggested that hundreds of homes had been swept away; the death toll was not yet known. But Matthew Francis of URS Corporation and a member of the civil engineering society’s tsunami subcommittee, said that education may have been the critical factor.

周五从大船渡传来的最原始消息表明，几百座房屋已被卷走，死亡人数尚不确定。但是URS集团的Matthew Francis——同时也是国家工程师协会海啸分委员会成员——说，教育可能是关键因素。

“For a trained population, a matter of 5 or 10 minutes is all you may need to get to high ground,” Mr. Francis said.

“对于一个训练有素的人群来说，逃到高处只需要5到10分钟的时间，”Francis先生说。

That would be in contrast to the much less experienced Southeast Asians, many of whom died in the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami because they lingered near the coast. Reports in the Japanese news media indicate that people originally listed as missing in remote areas have been turning up in schools and community centers, suggesting that tsunami education and evacuation drills were indeed effective.

对于经验不那么丰富的南亚人来说，情况可能就完全相反。2004年印度洋海啸死亡众多，就是因为许多人在海边逗留。从日本的新闻里就能看出，那些本来在失踪名单上的人原来是在学校或者社区中心中，这说明海啸教育和疏散训练的确有用。

Unlike Haiti, where shoddy construction vastly increased the death toll last year, or China, where failure to follow construction codes worsened the death toll in the devastating 2008 Sichuan earthquake, Japan enforces some of the world’s most stringent building codes. Japanese buildings tend to be much stiffer and stouter than similar structures in earthquake-prone areas in California as well, said Mr. Moehle, the Berkeley engineer: Japan’s building code allows for roughly half as much sway back and forth at the top of a high rise during a major quake.

The difference, Mr. Moehle said, comes about because the United States standard is focused on preventing collapse, while in Japan — with many more earthquakes — the goal is to prevent any major damage to the buildings because of the swaying.

New apartment and office developments in Japan flaunt their seismic resistance as a marketing technique, a fact that has accelerated the use of the latest technologies, said Ronald O. Hamburger, a structural engineer in the civil engineering society and Simpson Gumpertz & Heger, a San Francisco engineering firm.

“You can increase the rents by providing a sort of warranty — ‘If you locate here you’ll be safe,’ ” Mr. Hamburger said.

“你可以靠提供某种保证来提高租金——‘如果你在这，你就是安全的，’”Hamburger说。

Although many older buildings in Japan have been retrofitted with new bracing since the Kobe quake, there are many rural residences of older construction that are made of very light wood that would be highly vulnerable to damage. The fate of many of those residences is still unknown.

虽然神户地震后很多老房子都加固了，但是在农村还有很多由很轻的木头搭建的老建筑，它们在地震中很容易被摧毁。这些居民的命运现在还无从知晓。

Mr. Miyamoto, the Japanese engineer, described a nation in chaos as the quake also damaged or disabled many elements of the transportation system. He said that he and his family were on a train near the Ikebukuro station when the earthquake struck. Writing at 1:30 a.m., he said that “we are still not far from where the train stopped.”

“Japan Railway actually closed down the stations and sent out all commuters into the cold night,” he said. “They announced that they are concerned about structural safety. Continuous aftershocks make me feel like car sickness as my family and I walk on the train tracks.”

“日本实际上关闭了车站并在这个寒冷的夜里派出了所有的通讯员，”他说。“他们说他们关心这些建筑的安全。当我和家人沿着铁轨走时，不断的余震让我有晕车的感觉。”