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A lesson on codes for
buildings
By MELISSA BAILEY ,
Middletown
Press Staff, 11/1/2005
MIDDLETOWN
-- A partnership sponsored by the
Middletown
Rotary Club brings visitors from
Ecuador
this week to learn about American building code in the hopes of making
buildings safer in their native country.
The
Ecuadorian visitors come one year after Rotarians John Parker, John Forneris and
Al Santostefano trekked down to
Ecuador
to inspect buildings there.
The partnership, sponsored by a Rotary Club grant, aims
to equip Ecuadorians with the know-how to fill a huge safety gap in their
earth-quake-ridden city of
Guayaquil
: Their city has no building code, nor anyone to enforce it.
Parker,
Middletown
’s chief building inspector, describes one school he encountered on his trip
south last August in the South American country of
El Salvador
. The group visited a school, he said, being built with American aid money after
a earthquake wrecked the city of
San Salvador
.
U.S.
building code, said Parker, ensures long corridors have an exit door at the end
to prevent deadly pile-ups during an evacuation. The school, said Parker, was
wrought with "dead-end hallways," where such pile-ups were waiting to
happen.
Ecuador
had many safety hazards like this, said Forneris, whose granddaughter and
daughter-in-law live in that South American country. Forneris said his son,
Stephen, got him interested in getting the Rotary involved in bringing
Ecuadorian safety standards up to par with American ones.
Stephen, an architect who has worked in
Ecuador
for eight years, lobbied to get an act passed before Congress that intended to
do just that. The Code and Safety for the Americas Act was passed, ensuring
U.S.
building codes would be translated into Spanish so that South American
activists could learn from the codes. Stephen got his father, and the Rotary
Club, interested.
This week’s two Ecuadorian visitors, architect Patricio Agreda and engineer
Walter Meda are two such activists. Through their Rotary Club in
Guayaquil
, they got connected with
Middletown
’s club and are here for two weeks, meeting with government officials and
tagging along on Parker’s inspections at various sites in
Middletown
.
"We’re taking a firsthand look at the codes," said Agreda.
"Hopefully we’ll take all this back to
Ecuador
and make the local government understand the need to have a code in terms of
safety." Currently,
Ecuador
has no such codes, he said.
Guayaquil
,
Ecuador
’s biggest city, with about 3 million people, is in a seismic zone and
citizens often experience tremors, he said. Many buildings in his city don’t
even have basic safety precautions, such as two exit doors, that would prevent
death if a large earthquake should hit.
Agreda hopes to use his position as a professor at a large university to
increase awareness about building safety.
But the task is large: Builders, architects, fire department officials and local
government must all be equipped with the money and knowledge to enforce code.
But Agreda and Meda, who are taking the initiative simply as two concerned
citizens, are committed to the task.
The two will view many area sites, such as
Vinal
Tech
High School
, Meriden Square Mall and even Mohegan Sun Casino, because of its size.
"When we return we will try to convince the government of the absolute
necessity of a building code," said Meda.
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