Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 70.djvu/407

Rh the earth. A prompt repairing of the breaks in these two systems undoubtedly saved the city from an outbreak of destructive pestilence.

Arches in buildings apparently withstood the shock to a notable degree, whether transverse or parallel to the line of the earthquake motion. Generally when built in houses they preserved the parts around them. The Institute, a building in which some two hundred delegates had assembled in the first session of the West Indian Agricultural Conference, is built on two lines of arches at right angles to each other. The Institute was damaged, but withstood the shock. The great destruction of brick buildings in Kingston was doubtless due to the fact that poor mortar and dry bricks were used in the construction. The mortar generally appeared to be rather porous and usually the cracks in the wall followed the mortar, though at Up Park Camp, where the bricks were laid in cement mortar, the cracks passed through the bricks.

The streets were narrow (Figs. 4 and 5), so that the falling wall of even a two-story building would block the street, and many persons escaped from falling buildings only to be crushed in the choked narrow streets. A cement floor may help preserve a building from destruction. In many cases it could be seen that if the floors had been well tied to the walls and the walls themselves held at the corners, a great lessening of the destruction would have resulted. On account of the white ants foreign woods are, unless creosoted, difficult to use, but some frame houses showed but the slightest effect of the earthquake shock. The 'barrack' or 'noggin' structure, much used in earthquake countries, apparently suffered nearly as much as other brick walls.

Jamaica lies in a region of great differential relief and consequent stress. The earthquake was confined in its area of greatest destruction to small limits upon alluvial detrital material, where the amplitude was increased to bring about this effect, varying with the heterogeneity of material. The origin of the shock was comparatively shallow and the earthquake was local in character. While there was a general distinct rotary motion induced by two components of the vibrations, the major component came from a westerly direction. There were few evidences of sea waves, but there was a unique zone of Assuring and subsidence about the harbor of Kingston. Finally, the disasters at San Francisco, Valparaiso and Kingston should teach the lesson that in the case of cities located in a danger zone (where there are many recurring shocks of slight degree), there is always a possibility of the coming of a disastrous shock; that certain types of buildings should be built and streets laid out with that possibility in mind; that water, sewage and lighting systems should be planned in sections, and that as far as possible a city should not be located nor large edifices erected upon uncompacted rocks and soils.