INEVITABLY, the earthquake disaster in neighbouring Haiti has focused attention on Jamaica’s building codes.

The magnitude-7.0 earthquake of January 12, said to have been particularly destructive because its source was close to the surface, left in excess of 200,000 people dead, and countless others injured, homeless, without food, water and other basic amenities.

The great majority of the fatalities and injuries came as a result of collapsed buildings. Indeed, much of the infrastructure in Haiti’s capital Port-au-Prince and other towns and villages situated close to the epicentre of the earthquake, was destroyed.

Most experts seem to agree that should a tremor of similar magnitude hit Jamaica, it would not be on the same scale as experienced by our eastern neighbour. This, they suggest, is largely because of a superior culture in Jamaica in so far as construction is concerned.

We note the comment from Mr Michael Archer of the Incorporated Masterbuilders Association that an absence of adequate building standards at formal and informal levels in Haiti contributed to the scale of the disaster.

“When you look at the damage in Haiti, you see little or no steel,” Mr Archer is reported as saying in the Observer of January 27. And further: “Anyone who is building in Jamaica knows you have to find a mason and a steel man. Even though they are building an informal structure they know how to build in a formal sense…”

He is supported by Mr Ronald Jackson of the Office of Disaster and Emergency Management to the effect that “the difference is that when our squatters build a concrete structure, they build with steel, while in Haiti there wasn’t much steel”.

But just in case some Jamaicans may have been tempted into complacency, we are reminded by a Jamaica Information Service (JIS) article published in yesterday’s Sunday Observer that an updated building code is yet to be made law in Jamaica.

As this newspaper understands it, there is a national building code which dates back to the ’80s. It is usually adhered to by planners, architects, engineers, builders and is the standard used by building officers in local authorities whose job it is to assess and recommend final approval of structures across the country.

Still we are perturbed that this standard was never made law. As we understand it, the Government is being pressed to pass into law an even more advanced and comprehensive code that would bring Jamaica in line with current international standards. Construction sector sources say local architects and engineers are already borrowing from international standards to reinforce the minimum required of them by the 1980s code.

We are encouraged by news that the proposed updated legislation is being fast-tracked by Government. Surely the Haiti disaster will provide the necessary impetus.

For as we all should know by now Jamaica exists on the same earthquake fault line as Haiti. The destruction of Port Royal in 1692 and of Kingston in 1907 should be ample reminders.

It’s not a question of ‘if’ a major earthquake will strike Jamaica, only ‘when’. Further as we see first-hand every hurricane season, Jamaica, the wider Caribbean, the south-eastern United States and those areas bordering the Gulf of Mexico lie in the path of some of the most destructive storms on the planet.

As a nation we have a responsibility to protect ourselves from the effects of these disasters every way we can.