On Sep 26, 2005, at 8:14 AM, Horn, John wrote:
Behalf Of Russell Chapman
http://www.g-cans.jp/intro/07photo/
Wierd that a city that sits on an earthquake fault line uses
this sort of design for flood mitigation. I guess that's a
product of how critical their land use is - the land must be
valued so high that any alternative to canals and surface
floodways is more efficient.
My first thought upon looking at those pictures was also about
earthquakes. Can those structures stand up to a major earthquake or
will they be trashed and worthless...?
I just finished reading Robert Chassell's "can't/wrongly/can do"
posting, so it occurs to me to think that Russell and John must
subscribe to the "wrongly do" theory with regard to the Japanese
government, while I think it is very clear from my post that I
credit them with a "can do".
From at least one of the shots, it seems that the supports for the
ceiling of the "pitch pressure tank" are about 3-4 feet thick by 20-30
feet wide, spaced about 30-40 feet apart. There may or may not be a
civil engineer on this list who can judge it better than I can, but I
would bet yen to manju that this thing is designed to survive just about
whatever earthquake is likely to occur. I don't think they'd invest
billions and a decade and a half building something that would fall
apart on them. The very fact that they built this thing in the first
place suggests that they take protecting their capital city very
seriously.
Anyway, I don't think there's a snowball's chance in hell that the
USA would build anything even remotely like this just to protect a
bunch of po' folk in New Orleans, unless it could also be used to
provide a hiding place for the Vice President in the event of another
9/11.
Dave
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