6. IDNDR

A study on “Earthquake Injury Epidemiology and Search and Rescue in Collapsed Buildings” is presently undertaken under the sponsorship of NCEER, the National Center of Earthquake Engineering Research.

IDNDR, the International Decade for Natural Disaster Reduction, with its large international interdisciplinary research programs, provides an unique opportunity to extend this study in different geographical contexts, especially in earthquake prone areas in developing countries (10).

It should be one of the outcome of this workshop to prepare a preliminary protocol and set up a task force for such a study.

TABLE 1: MORTALITY RATES, INJURY RATES, INJURED TO DEATH RATIOS, AND DELAY IN RESCUE, IN SINGLE AND MULTIPLE HOUSEHOLD, ITALY, 1980

	One person of household present	Two or more persons or household present	X2
number of people	285	3,334
death rate	11.2 %	5.1 %	(p < 0.05)
injury rate	20.7 %	13.6 %	(p < 0.05)
injured/death (ratio)	1.8	2.6
proportion of persons trapped	23.9 %	14.4 %	(p < 0.001)
death rate amongst trapped	45.6 %	33.6 %	(p < 0.05)
proportion of trapped extricated (dead or alive) within 24 hours	46.5 %	61.0 %	(p < 0.05)

Fig. 1: SURVIVAL OF PEOPLE RESCUED FROM DEBRIS IN RELATION TO THE DELAY OF RESCUE, TANGHSAN (CHINA) 1976

Fig. 2: CUMULATIVE NUMBER OF PEOPLE EXTRICATED, TOTAL AND ALIVE, ACCORDING TO DELAY IN RESCUE, ITALY, 1980