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(Haiti quake: Survivors struggle while awaiting aid); an obvious, but much-needed Bay Area reminder on what to consider before an earthquake

The Haitian presidential palace stands in ruins on Tuesday in Port-au-Prince after a huge earthquake measuring 7.0 rocked the impoverished Caribbean nation of Haiti, toppling buildings and causing widespread damage and panic.

Photo: Lisandro Suero / AFP/Getty Images

Over the next few days (or weeks), and given that I am a life-long resident of the San Francisco Bay Area, I will be devoting a lot of my posts to earthquake / infrastructure related issues. Given the amount of earthquakes which have taken place recently (a 6.5 Earthquake recently hit near Eureka, California, causing some moderate damages, and a 4.0 Earthquake hit around the Milpitas, CA area), I feel it's important to research, as well as educate readers about issues related to earthquakes/infrastructure to inspire change, whether it be small or big scale changes.

With this article, Survivors struggle while awaiting aid, I want to analyze and compare what Bay Area residents need to be concerned about; while my analysis will be very obvious here, a lot of the factors of earthquake preparation are often ignored: earthquake preparation should be based on what will take place, such as damaged public utilities, lack of aid, etc., and I will highlight those problems.

Based on the article by the Associated Press, (source:  http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2010/01/12/international/i141733S04.DTL ) Port Au Prince seems to be in a very apocalyptic and chaotic state.

More urban planning / transportation engineering articles/videos

Some videos showing you urban planning / transportation engineering related facts.

This is a video of the Key System, a streetcar system which was spread throughout the East Bay during the first half of the 20th century. This was quickly dismantled as General Motors, Standard Oil, and Firestone Tire popularized the bus and quickly soon, the automobile. (I still need to finish this before school starts):

Why I study civil engineering: video

Random, but goals!

This music is putting me in the mood. Ayaka = great !

Goals:

SLOW DOWN TIME!

Finally, the semester is ending. A chance to slow down and recollect my thoughts.

YouTube videos inspring me to major in urban studies

While I get some much needed rest before finals studying comes along, I decided to post up a few YouTube videos which inspired me to do city planning / urban studies, based on its crazily interdisciplinary field: