Technological Advances On November 7, 1940, the Tacoma Narrows Bridge was hit by winds of up to 40 miles per hour. The bridge began to spin and flutter. Some cables snapped and a six-hundred-foot section of the bridge fell into Puget Sound. ^Wind is but one disaster, earthquakes are another^ (Jay Stuller 36). Disasters like this and others could have been avoided if proper precautions had been taken. Due to disasters around the world, today's and tomorrow's structures are much safer. Today, most of these disasters are avoided thanks to updated technology, such as architecture, that predicts disasters in advance and new techniques used by emergency rescue teams. Some important advances in today's buildings include aspects such as the material used. For example, products such as steel-reinforced concrete (refer to Diagram 3-1), steel structures, and properly reinforced wood structures for homes are some examples of how buildings are renovated and how new buildings are constructed to protect themselves from disasters. Additionally, building foundations can be built on shock-absorbing insulation bases containing springs or alternating layers of steel and rubber plates, to counteract the effects of earthquakes. In Japan, architecture has kept earthquakes in mind when designing and building structures. Unfortunately, buildings were designed primarily to resist vertical forces. Japanese buildings were designed to resist a certain acceleration force, but in January 1995 an earthquake hit the city of Kobe, devastating the buildings, which were thought to be safe. It simply shows “that building design criteria are crucial to resisting the effects of earthquakes” (Gerad Baker 12). Ordinary wooden Japanese houses that had heavy roofs collapsed, and newer houses were also demolished, as shown in Diagram 3-2. This could have been avoided by building homes with lighter plywood frames and stringers that distribute the force evenly, rather than homes with heavy wood walls that collapse under the force. Additionally, the materials used to build structures have a lot to do with the survival rate of buildings. The use of reinforced concrete is believed to be the main reason buildings remain intact. You can reinforce older buildings with additional concrete easily and effectively, which has been done in California since 1989. Bridges, a totally different aspect of construction, but a very similar method of creating soundproof structures. During the Kobe earthquake, the Hanshin Expressway collapsed sideways for a stretch of 600 m (photo on page 5). This type of roadway is built on reinforced concrete pillars. There is steel inside the pillars to increase their ability to bend and flex with movement