BUILDING STANDARDS IN THE USA

Whenever I see a house under construction in the USA , I have to wonder how come it has not occurred to the authorities that their building standards are way below par. You just have to see the regular television reports of the devastation that follows the frequent tornadoes to see what is happening. The thing about tornadoes is that they seem almost impossible to predict....a bit like our earthquakes in  Jamaica. But that is no excuse not to have residences built to a  nationwide standard to withstand these whenever and wherever they strike, for  every time a tornado strikes a community, you see vivid pictures of houses having crumbled as if they are made from paper.....and houses in the USA aint cheap!.

From Florida to California and Colorado, whenever I see construction being done, the exposed  infrastructure seems quite cheap and I ofttimes wonder if it not just crumbly, ordinary bagasse board that I always see peeping out .......not a sign of even a little steel anywhere. The exception is of course areas in Florida, which hurricane Andrew virtually flattened  some years ago. Now the smart people are building sturdy residences, bearing in mind the fact that natural disasters can occur.

On the other hand, take the Japanese, they obviously take the hazards of nature seriously for the almost 10 earthquake they had recently did very little damage. What devastated them was the tsunami that followed , and even that they had prepared for reasonably well, building sea walls in strategic areas. You will recall that the tsunami  in 2004 killed almost 200,000 persons in Indonesia alone and thousands more in other Pacific countries as opposed to under 50,000 dead and missing after the double whammy of one of the most dangerous earthquakes in recorded history, followed by a tsunami in Japan.

 I wonder what the effect of a tsunami in Florida or some other coastal state of the USA would be? From what I see of their building standards, I fear it would be a total wipeout. I hope I will never be anywhere close when the inevitable occurs!