Arlington Heights man at forefront of earthquake fight

Like most of his fellow Hawaii residents, Frank Humay paid close attention late Thursday and early Friday as hourly sirens warned residents of a possible tsunami from the massive earthquake that struck Japan.

But the Arlington Heights native had more than just safety in mind.

Humay is a structural engineer, specifically designing buildings to withstand the earthquakes, tsunamis and hurricanes that threaten the Pacific Rim.

Although the tsunami’s impact never materialized as feared on his home island of Oahu, Friday’s cataclysmic events in Japan underscore the importance of Humay’s work.

Based on the latest data and analysis from around the world, designs created by Humay and fellow structural engineers aim to prevent the state’s new buildings from becoming death traps during major earthquakes.

Building codes in Hawaii — as along the West Coast of the United States and, indeed, Japan — demand that new structures be earthquake-proof, Humay said.

But laws in even the most earthquake-prone places don’t require the removal, replacement or retrofitting of older structures — the major sources of death and destruction when big quakes do occur, he said.

“There are a lot of old buildings in Hawaii,” Humay said.

New Zealand, for example, is one of the global leaders in earthquake-proof structural engineering, but no one dared ruin with ugly retrofitting the beauty of a historically significant masonry cathedral near the epicenter of the recent quake in Christchurch. The cathedral was reduced to rubble by the quake.

Japan, Humay said, is a world leader in making buildings earthquake proof, but still has its share of older structures that could crumble or collapse in a disaster.

There are two basic approaches to making a building “earthquake-proof,” he said.

The first makes the building extremely rigid and heavy enough to withstand the shaking of a powerful quake. Unfortunately, the approach is often prohibitively expensive, he said.

The second and much more common approach is to make the building more flexible, allowing it to bend a great deal without breaking during a natural disaster.

While that anticipates some damage to the building, which hopefully can be repaired, the bigger concern is safeguarding the lives of people in and near the building, Humay said.

Earthquakes, Humay said, are the living laboratory that provides the data that ultimately makes buildings safer. Guam, he said, is just about the most seismically active place on Earth and tends to provide a great deal of the information structural engineers look to.

Though earthquake-proof buildings are safer, one would not construct them without need — like in Illinois, for instance — due to their significantly greater expense.

Greater shipping and labor costs imposed by the state’s isolation already make building in Hawaii a more expensive proposition, Humay said. Making a building earthquake-proof can add yet another 10 to 20 percent to the cost.

Humay, who graduated from Prospect High School in Mount Prospect in 1988, said structural engineering held a fascination for him even then.

“I was always interested in solving problems,” Humay said. “In high school, I enjoyed physics.”

His interest in making buildings earthquake-proof gradually developed throughout his higher education. He earned his bachelor’s degree from the University of Illinois, his master’s degree from Stanford University and a Ph.D. from Rice University in Houston before putting his learning into practice in Hawaii.

Humay is now vice president of Baldridge & Associates Structural Engineering, Inc. in Honolulu.