Building Knowledge, Not Just Houses, in the Developing World

When Elizabeth Hausler visited India in 2003 to tour areas devastated by earthquakes years earlier, she was dismayed. In Maharashtra state, where a 1993 temblor killed 10,000 people, relief agencies had built thousands of homes for survivors. Many people, though, used them only for storage and slept in ramshackle shelters. The nonprofits built the houses with little input from the locals, so residents didn’t trust that they would withstand another quake. In nearby Gujarat, which had been hit by a quake in 2001, Hausler saw houses built by aid groups that ignored local practice by placing doors on the street rather than facing the courtyard. “People would knock a hole in the wall and move the door,” says Hausler. “That’s not very good for earthquake resistance.”

An engineer trained at the University of California at Berkeley, Hausler had long known that earthquakes rarely kill people; shoddy construction does. Yet better construction isn’t the only factor in keeping people safe during earthquakes. When aid groups don’t understand local customs and construction methods, homeowners are often discontented and safety is compromised. On her India trip, Hausler discovered that in places where the government had given locals the money and some engineering guidance to rebuild their homes after earthquakes, residents wound up with houses they were more apt to live in.