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Descriptive Epidemiology of New Zealand’s Highest Mortality Earthquake: Hawke’s Bay in 1931

In this study we aimed to produce the first detailed analysis of the epidemiology of the severe injury and mortality impacts of the 1931 Hawke’s Bay earthquake in New Zealand (NZ). This involved the compilation and analysis of archival data (hospitalisations and deaths) including the examination of...

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Autores principales: Clement, Christine, Abeling, Shannon, Deely, Joanne, Teng, Andrea, Thomson, George, Johnston, David, Wilson, Nick
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Nature Publishing Group UK 2019
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6426931/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30894655
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-019-41432-6
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author Clement, Christine
Abeling, Shannon
Deely, Joanne
Teng, Andrea
Thomson, George
Johnston, David
Wilson, Nick
author_facet Clement, Christine
Abeling, Shannon
Deely, Joanne
Teng, Andrea
Thomson, George
Johnston, David
Wilson, Nick
author_sort Clement, Christine
collection PubMed
description In this study we aimed to produce the first detailed analysis of the epidemiology of the severe injury and mortality impacts of the 1931 Hawke’s Bay earthquake in New Zealand (NZ). This involved the compilation and analysis of archival data (hospitalisations and deaths) including the examination of 324 death certificates. We found that there were 662 people for whom some hospitalisation data were available at four weeks post-earthquake: 54% were still in hospital, 4% were still classified as “serious”, and 5% had died (n = 28). Our classification of death certificate data indicated 256 earthquake-attributable deaths and for another five deaths the earthquake was estimated to have played an indirect role. There were 15 buildings associated with three or more deaths each (accounting for 58% of deaths with a known location). Many of these buildings were multi-storey and involved unreinforced masonry – with some of this falling into the street and killing people there (19% of deaths). In contrast, deaths in homes, which were typically of wood construction and single stories, comprised only 3% of deaths. In conclusion, this earthquake had a relatively high injury impact that appears partly related to the lack of regulations for building construction that would mitigate earthquake-related risk. Such regulations continue to be of relevance for New Zealand and for other countries in earthquake zones.
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spelling pubmed-64269312019-03-28 Descriptive Epidemiology of New Zealand’s Highest Mortality Earthquake: Hawke’s Bay in 1931 Clement, Christine Abeling, Shannon Deely, Joanne Teng, Andrea Thomson, George Johnston, David Wilson, Nick Sci Rep Article In this study we aimed to produce the first detailed analysis of the epidemiology of the severe injury and mortality impacts of the 1931 Hawke’s Bay earthquake in New Zealand (NZ). This involved the compilation and analysis of archival data (hospitalisations and deaths) including the examination of 324 death certificates. We found that there were 662 people for whom some hospitalisation data were available at four weeks post-earthquake: 54% were still in hospital, 4% were still classified as “serious”, and 5% had died (n = 28). Our classification of death certificate data indicated 256 earthquake-attributable deaths and for another five deaths the earthquake was estimated to have played an indirect role. There were 15 buildings associated with three or more deaths each (accounting for 58% of deaths with a known location). Many of these buildings were multi-storey and involved unreinforced masonry – with some of this falling into the street and killing people there (19% of deaths). In contrast, deaths in homes, which were typically of wood construction and single stories, comprised only 3% of deaths. In conclusion, this earthquake had a relatively high injury impact that appears partly related to the lack of regulations for building construction that would mitigate earthquake-related risk. Such regulations continue to be of relevance for New Zealand and for other countries in earthquake zones. Nature Publishing Group UK 2019-03-20 /pmc/articles/PMC6426931/ /pubmed/30894655 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-019-41432-6 Text en © The Author(s) 2019 Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
spellingShingle Article
Clement, Christine
Abeling, Shannon
Deely, Joanne
Teng, Andrea
Thomson, George
Johnston, David
Wilson, Nick
Descriptive Epidemiology of New Zealand’s Highest Mortality Earthquake: Hawke’s Bay in 1931
title Descriptive Epidemiology of New Zealand’s Highest Mortality Earthquake: Hawke’s Bay in 1931
title_full Descriptive Epidemiology of New Zealand’s Highest Mortality Earthquake: Hawke’s Bay in 1931
title_fullStr Descriptive Epidemiology of New Zealand’s Highest Mortality Earthquake: Hawke’s Bay in 1931
title_full_unstemmed Descriptive Epidemiology of New Zealand’s Highest Mortality Earthquake: Hawke’s Bay in 1931
title_short Descriptive Epidemiology of New Zealand’s Highest Mortality Earthquake: Hawke’s Bay in 1931
title_sort descriptive epidemiology of new zealand’s highest mortality earthquake: hawke’s bay in 1931
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6426931/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30894655
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-019-41432-6
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