GOOD WORKS
“The school is vulnerable. The walls are brick infill and not tied into the reinforced concrete frame, so they can pop out in an earthquake.” - ANDREW MITCHELL, P.ENG.
Peter Little, P.Eng., and Dean Mullin, P.Eng., all provided support at different stages of the project. The retrofit took several years, with actual construction happening in 2007. Mr. Mitchell’s son Ross, a home builder
warned teachers in the buildings to stay on high alert and leave doors open for quick exit. Despite the challenges SMD faced, Ms. Blair considers the staff and stu- dents there fortunate. Across Nepal, 20,000 schools were destroyed and one million children can’t go to school. “Our kids and their families are amazingly resilient. They just get on with it and help others,” Ms. Blair
who specializes in environmentally friendly design, spent three months in Nepal overseeing the project. There wasn’t enough money in the budget to fix the walls, so the team focused on strengthening A Block’s central stairwell, including putting in two extra columns for support. “The school is vulnerable,” notes Mr. Mitchell. “The walls are brick infill and not tied into the reinforced concrete frame, so they can pop out in an earthquake.” Still, it appears their work paid off — A Block suffered only superficial damage in the quake. It also withstood a subsequent 7.3-magnitude quake on May 12. The building with the dining hall is no longer safe to use. A seismic engineer has warned that it could shear above the second floor in something as mild as a tremor. The school does have fund- ing for the repairs, but it needs government permission before work begins and that’s slow to come. Two other main buildings were damaged but have been cleared for use — with caution. In the aftermath of the quakes, more than 200 students spent over a month living under tarps and tents on the school’s soccer pitch while they awaited word on the buildings’ safety. Joining them were school staff and neighbours who had lost their homes. At times, monsoon rains flooded the area, leaving behind ankle-deep mud and sewage. Engineers eventually gave A Block the green light, allow- ing some students to move back in. Rain and the threat of typhoid eventually forced the rest of the SMD family to move back into two other minimally damaged buildings. Classes have restarted in tem- porary outdoor shelters and two damaged buildings. Engineers have
says. “We delivered aid packages until desperate villagers started to attack convoys and until five of our older kids got trapped by landslides.” The estimated cost to repair and retrofit the damaged SMD buildings is US $200,000, although the school’s longtime dream is to build a larger, earthquake-resistant campus in the Kathmandu Valley, with space for more students away from the current location in the crowded and polluted city of Kathmandu itself. Whatever the school does, Mr. Mitchell will continue to lend support. He organized a fundraiser in September, with Derrick Harrison, P.Eng., an APEGA Life Member, donating his time to make a presentation on an unrelated subject. Mr. Mitchell has also appealed to APEGA Members, through the e-PEG, to provide whatever support they can. Donations to the SMD School Building Fund can be made to Namo Buddha Foundation, a registered Canadian Charity. “SMD gives these children an op- portunity for education. There are no schools in the high Himalayas where they’re from. Many of the children may not have survived without the school,” he says. Also coming forward again is Mr. Kowalczewski, Principal of Janto Engineering, who offered to travel to Nepal after the quakes to assess the damaged buildings. The trip wasn’t needed for now, but he’s ready to help out again, should his engineering skills be required in the future. “I’m at a stage in my life that I can help out more. It’s good to give back,” he explains.
FINDING SHELTER SMD Students sleep under tarps on the school’s soccer pitch after the April 25 earthquake. Later, they returned to their dorms after safety inspections. -photo courtesy Sebastian Stiphout
WINTER 2015 PEG | 73
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