Elizabeth Hausler explains to Global X that she was finishing her Ph.D. in engineering at Berkeley when an earthquake hit India and killed 20,000 people. That's when she realized that "it's not the earthquake that kills people, it's the building collapsing."
She looked for a solution and launched Build Change to build earthquake-resistant houses in developing countries and change construction practices permanently so that homeowners in seismically active developing countries can sleep at night.
June 30, 2008: Reconnaissance to Sichuan
Build Change's Founder, Dr. Elizabeth Hausler, visited the earthquake-affected area to understand why buildings failed and make plans to support earthquake-resistant housing reconstruction. Using unconfined precast concrete plank floors on top of unreinforced masonry walls caused most of the devastation (foreground in photo below), but some confined masonry buildings performed flawlessly (background).
Visit the Technical Resources page under post-earthquake recon reports for more information, and support the homeowners to rebuild earthquake-resistant houses so they never have to face such tragedy again. DONATE NOW
May 12, 2008: Devastation in China
69,185 killed. 374,171 injured. 18,467 missing. More than 7.79 million houses destroyed and 24.5 million damaged. 5 million homeless, and 10 million now living below the poverty line after a M7.9 earthquake.
January 28, 2008 : On Video!
Elizabeth Hausler explains to Global X that she was finishing her Ph.D. in engineering at Berkeley when an earthquake hit India and killed 20,000 people. That's when she realized that "it's not the earthquake that kills people, it's the building collapsing."
