A modern huilding code's widespread use of wood saYes in disaster lives ALASKA auAKr

modern building code instituted by far-sighted city-planners in Anchorage, Alaska has proven to be one of the major factors in the unbelievably low number of lives lost in the disastrous earthquake that rocked the 49th state on Good Friday.

Plywood applications of "shear iall" and "diaphragm" techniques in construction systems per{ormed exactly as laboratory work at the American Plywood Association indicated they would.

Those are the two key conclusions in a preliminary report by American Plywood Association observers who flew to Anchorage hours after the first shocks struck the city.

The association pioneered research in the early 1950's on the use of large panels to stabilize buildings against the forces of earthquakes and high winds. When floors or roofs are engineered to carry lateral loads, they become diaphragms. Vertical walls or partitions similarly engineered are shear walls.

The plywood association's Alaska report said that one of the most impressive facets of the disaster "is the relationship of the destructive forces of the earthquake to life loss."

In Anchorage, the largest metropolitan area in the state with a trading area population of 102,000. only six persons were known dead and seven others were missing on Red Cross lists 33 days after the earthquake.

Unofficial estimates were that about 1332 living units were destroyed or severely damaged in the earthquake throughout Alaska. About 700 or 750 of those units were in Anchorage.

By contrast, the 1963 earthquake in Skopje, Yugoslavia, claimed about I,050 lives in a city of 200,000. And, most of Skopje's homes were damaged-some estimates running as high as 95 per cent. No uniform building code was in force there.

The American Plywood Association ob. servation team gives a lot of the credit to the city's building code for the low life loss.

Says James R. Turnbull, executive vicepresident of the plywood association: "Our preliminary reports strongly indicate that the Anchorage Building Code, which is the l96I revision of the- Uniform Building Code, rendered an inestimable service to the people of the city. The ultimate purpose of any code is the protection of human life. By requiring shear walls and diaphragm construction in public buildings, commercial buildings and single family dwellings, the code undoubtedly saved many lives."

Turnbull said that there is still a lot to

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