Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
with the major water course, the Red river, running north, but having its source in
the south, so spring melt occurred earlier. Their original plans called for the railway
to cross the Red River at Selkirk, downstream from Winnipeg, where high banks
protected the area around, which would have been a more suitable site for a cross-
ing and the projected major railway yards. However, the offer of free land near the
Red-Assiniboine junction and a substantial cash sum from the local business com-
munity led the railway to divert its main line south and build its railway yards and
other facilities in their nascent town. This was part of a new route change in 1881
to directly cross the Prairie grasslands, rather than through the wooded area to the
north that Sir Stanford Fleming had preferred and surveyed by 1877. The change
stimulated the growth of what became the gateway city to the development of the
Prairie Provinces, but in a location prone to disastrous floods, a problem that could
have been prevented by a more sensible choice of site during the early railway era
(Berton
1970
). However, as subsequent sections will show, a very different ap-
proach to dealing with these types of problem is being pioneered by the Dutch, in
which the emphasis has moved away from engineering solutions that attempt only
to contain rivers or seas.
9734
Priority Facilities
An essential requirement to improve urban resilience is the need to ensure that cer-
tain key or priority buildings have the structural capability to withstand major natu-
ral events, as well as being sited in areas that are as safe as possible—in other words
not on exposed shore lines, flood plains, beneath unstable slopes, or on fault lines.
In addition, these buildings should be on routes that are easily accessed in emergen-
cies and can be cleared quickly if they are subject to natural disasters.
Schools
are
one of these priority buildings because they contain a vulnerable population that
may not be able to care for themselves in a disaster. Also schools are often desig-
nated as temporary emergency shelters to cater for a displaced population in the im-
mediate aftermath of some event causing destruction to surrounding areas. In some
countries the regularity of major cyclonic storms and floods mean that it is also
appropriate to have special shelters to act as refuges when storm strikes, equipped
with sufficient bedding and food to allow people to remain in safely and relative
comfort, as already described in the case of Bangladesh.
Hospitals
should also be
priority buildings. It imperative that these facilities are built to the highest standards
so they remain open and functioning to cater for the injured during an emergency,
and again should be located in a place with good access by the injured as well as by
medical personnel and emergency services. Unfortunately, there have been many
cases in which these priority buildings have been among the first to collapse due to
shoddy construction and poor structural designs. For example, in February 2010 a
massive earthquake, of 8.8 on Richter scale, centred near the populous Chilean Val-
le de Itata, and its related tsunami affected over 2 million people, with over a third
of a million houses seriously damaged and losses of over $ 30 billion. Over half
of the 73 hospitals and over 4 thousand schools were destroyed or badly damaged,
