(Barbados Nation) – Should a hurricane or an earthquake strike, about 75 per cent of Barbados’ homes could be reduced to rubble due to shoddy construction.
That alarm was raised in New York by Grenville Phillips II, one of the nation’s top structural engineers and a former two-term president of the Barbados Association of Professional Engineers.
He told the Daily Nation that far too many contractors and artisans were either untrained, or had failed to follow the nation’s extensive building code.
Just as bad, inspectors of the planning department, Phillips complained, were not carrying out the inspections needed to ensure that the code’s requirements were being met.
What’s so troubling about the alarming situation, Phillips said, was that the solution would not involve any extra costs by contractors and homeowners and very little effort by the Planning Department.
“That effort is simply a secretary typing out a sentence and then copying it for all of the others [documents]. That would prevent, I believe, all of the probable or likely damage that we would suffer.”
“Seventy five per cent of the roofs would go should a hurricane strike,” he said. “I have spent considerable time going around Barbados trying to find evidence of good construction that I could use in the seminars for the Barbados Association of Professional Engineers, which are free to the public.
“But I couldn’t find any. All I found was a lot of sub-standard work. The general thing is that concrete is not being mixed or cured properly; steel not being bent properly; blocks not being connected properly; and walls and roof frames not being placed properly, which would result in vulnerable structures . . . , so they would be turned into rubble after the first major earthquake or hurricane; and [there is the] potential death of those inside the structures.”
The structural engineer said he had complained to successive governments for about ten years.
Phillips charged that Barbadians had failed to learn from the tragedy in Grenada where more than 80 per cent of the homes and buildings were levelled by successive hurricanes in 2004. Even worse, he added, officials in Barbados had failed to accept his offer of free training to correct the problem.
