Danville area Earthquake! Unconventional tips to survive!

Comments(0) By Mike Miller •June 6th, 2008

At 2am last night I was awoke by the earthquake like many of you were. As I laid there wondering if more were to come, I remembered this article which explains a little known method of surviving an earthquake. In light of the quake, I would like to veer off the Danville mortgage and real estate topic, in order to share this very valuable info with you all. Please forward to others as well, as the life that is saved may be a loved one!

EXTRACT FROM DOUG COPP’S ARTICLE ON THE
“TRIANGLE OF LIFE”

My name is Doug Copp. I am the Rescue Chief and
Disaster Manager of the American Rescue Team International (ARTI),
the world’s most experienced rescue team. The information in this
article will save lives in an earthquake.

I have crawled inside 875 collapsed buildings,
worked with rescue teams from 60 countries,
founded rescue teams in several countries, and I am a
member of many rescue teams from many countries.
I was the United Nations expert in Disaster Mitigation
for two years. I have worked at every major
disaster in the world since 1985, except for simultaneous disasters.

In 1996 we made a film which proved my survival
methodology to be correct. The Turkish Federal Government, City of
Istanbul, University of Istanbul Case Productions and ARTI
cooperated to film this practical, scientific test.

We collapsed a school and a home with 20 mannequins inside. Ten
mannequins did “duck and cover,” and ten mannequins I used in my
“triangle of life” survival method. After the simulated earthquake
collapse we crawled through the rubble and entered the building to
film and document the results. The film, in which I practiced my
survival techniques under directly observable, scientific
conditions, relevant to building collapse, showed there
would have been zero percent survival for those doing
duck and cover.
There would likely have been 100 percent survivability
for people using my method of the “triangle of life.”
This film has been seen by millions of viewers on television
in Turkey and the rest of Europe, and it was seen in the
USA, Canada and Latin America on the TV program Real TV.

The first building I ever crawled inside of was a school
in Mexico City during the 1985 earthquake. Every child was under
their desk. Every child was crushed to the thickness of their bones.
They could have survived by lying down next to their desks in the
aisles. It was obscene, unnecessary and I wondered why the children
were not in the aisles. I didn’t at the time know that the children
were told to hide under something.
Simply stated, when buildings collapse, the weight of the
ceilings falling upon the objects or furniture inside crushes
these objects, leaving a space or void next to them.
This space is what I call the “triangle of life”.
The larger the object, the stronger, and the less it will
compact. The less the object compacts, the larger the
void, the greater the probability that the person who
is using this void for safety will not be injured.
The next time you watch collapsed buildings on television,
count the “triangles” you see formed. They are everywhere.
It is the most common shape, you will see, in a collapsed
building. They are everywhere.

TEN TIPS FOR EARTHQUAKE SAFETY

1) Most everyone who simply “ducks and covers”
when buildings collapse are crushed to death.
People who get under objects, like desks or cars, are crushed.

2) Cats, dogs and babies often naturally curl up
in the fetal position. You should too in an earthquake.
It is a natural safety/survival instinct.
You can survive in a smaller void. Get next to
an object, next to a sofa, next to a large bulky object that will
compress slightly but leave a void next to it.

3) Wooden buildings are the safest type of construction
to be in during an earthquake. Wood is flexible and moves with the
force of the earthquake. If the wooden building does collapse, large
survival voids are created. Also, the wooden building has less
concentrated, crushing weight. Brick buildings will break into
individual bricks. Bricks will cause many injuries but less
squashed bodies than concrete slabs.

4) If you are in bed during the night and an earthquake occurs,
simply roll off the bed. A safe void will exist around the bed.
Hotels can achieve a much greater survival rate in earthquakes,
simply by posting a sign on the back of the door of every room
telling occupants to lie down on the floor, next to the bottom of the
bed during an earthquake.

5) If an earthquake happens and you cannot easily escape
by getting out the door or window, then lie down and curl up in the
fetal position next to a sofa, or large chair.

6) Most everyone who gets under a doorway when buildings collapse is
killed. How? If you stand under a doorway and the doorjamb falls
forward or backward you will be crushed by the ceiling above. If the
door jam falls sideways you will be cut in half by the doorway. In
either case, you will be killed!

7) Never go to the stairs. The stairs have a different “moment of
frequency” (they swing separately from the main part of the building).

The stairs and remainder of the building continuously bump
into each other until structural failure of the stairs takes place.
The people who get on stairs before they fail are chopped up by the
stair treads – horribly mutilated. Even if the building doesn’t
collapse, stay away from the stairs. The stairs are a likely part of
the building to be damaged. Even if the stairs are not collapsed by
the earthquake, they may collapse later when overloaded by
fleeing people. They should always be checked for safety,
even when the rest of the building is not damaged.

Get Near the Outer Walls Of Buildings or outside of
them if possible. It is much better to be near the outside of the
building rather than the interior. The farther inside you are from
the outside perimeter of the building the greater the probability
that your escape route will be blocked.

9) People inside of their vehicles are crushed when the road above
falls in an earthquake and crushes their vehicles; which is exactly
what happened with the slabs between the decks of the Nimitz Freeway.
The victims of the San Francisco earthquake all stayed inside of
their vehicles. They were all killed. They could have easily survived
by getting out and sitting or lying next to their vehicles. Everyone
killed would have survived if they had been able to get out of their
cars and sit or lie next to them. All the crushed cars had voids 3
feet high next to them, except for the cars that had columns fall
directly across them.

10) I discovered, while crawling inside of collapsed newspaper
offices and other offices with a lot of paper, that paper does not
compact. Large voids are found surrounding stacks of paper.

Spread the word to everyone YOU care about and save someone’s life!

No related posts.

Filed Under: Community Info