LA JOLLA – On a windswept mesa in San Diego, a giant contraption rattled into action. It shook the metal structure of a building, jarring and jerking and rattling the frame with the force of a 9.0 earthquake.

The 40-foot-by-20-foot device is the largest outdoor “shake table” in the United States and second largest in the world. Built in 2003 to test structural resistance to earthquakes, it is part of the University of California, San Diego, Jacobs School of Engineering’s Englekirk Structural Engineering Center.

The force produced by the shake table is so powerful that it could not be built on the UCSD campus, where the ground is so soft that the table itself would provoke tremors in the coastal neighborhoods north of La Jolla.

Dr. Jose Restrepo, a professor of structural engineering at the Jacobs School of Engineering who helped design the shake table, hosted Latin American journalists during an April 26-30 Institute of the Americas journalism workshop on covering natural disasters.

“During earthquakes, strong is not necessarily better,” Restrepo said. “The less concrete and steel, the more buildings will bend and not break.”

Journalists from seven countries attended the workshop, including four journalists from Haiti, as well as journalists from Chile, Mexico, Argentina, Peru, Guatemala and Nicaragua. Restrepo explained the reasons that the Haiti, Chile and Mexicali earthquakes – all with a magnitude of 7.2 or higher – were so strikingly different in the amount of damage they caused and the number of lives that were lost.

In Haiti, the 7.2 earthquake occurred near the densely populated capital where concrete structures are constructed with few building codes, killing at least 250,000 people and leaving more than 1 million homeless.

In Chile, the 8.8 earthquake claimed about 500 lives, with most of those deaths due to a tsunami that followed the temblor. Only eight deaths occurred in modern buildings, Restrepo said. In Mexicali, the capital of Baja California with 800,000 residents, a 7.2 earthquake on Easter Sunday claimed only two lives. “If it had been Monday, there would have been a lot more deaths,” Restrepo said. “

But it was Easter Sunday, so people were at home and the homes in Mexicali were not affected.” Dr. Jorge Meneses, president of the San Diego chapter of the Engineering Institute of Earthquake Engineering, told the journalists that building design is critical to the survival of people living in regions with significant seismic activity. “Earthquakes do not kill people,” he said. “

What kills people are buildings that collapse. Building codes are not meant to prevent damage to the buildings. Building codes are meant to prevent collapse.” Dr Eric Frost, director of the Visualization Laboratory at San Diego State University, spoke with the journalists about new technologies that link people when disaster strikes.

“When a disaster happens, who do you call? Who does your president call? We are building a network of friends that is connected around disasters,” he said. Frost stressed the critical role that journalists play during natural disasters.

“Journalists are some of the most credible people out there,” Frost said, “and you have an important story to convey. That story will push people to do something for those who need help the most.”