|
 |
Discussion/Presentation Activity
You own a condominium on the ninth floor of a fifteen-story high-rise on the beach in Virginia Beach, Virginia. Recently, you've been receiving newsletters from the condo management warning that tsunamis are possible on the Atlantic coastline and that maintenance is doing everything possible to make the building more secure in the event of a tsunami catastrophe. Unfortunately, the building was built in the nineteen seventies and the designers were thinking more about getting the jump on new development than about tsunamis.
You and your family (you and your fellow students) have to decide what you would do if you were sitting on the sofa in your condo and heard on TV that a tsunami could hit any moment.
There are two elevators in the center of the building and a stairway at each end of the floor (all on the highway side of the building.) Your condo is on the ocean side of the building. There are balconies on either side of the condo; one on the living room (ocean-side) and one in the master bedroom (highway side.) Your condo is at the end of the hallway, on the far north side of the building, so you also have a window on the north wall that looks onto the next condo, just twenty-five meters away. This window is about four square feet. Your condo and the condo on the south end of the floor are the only condos with balconies on both sides of the building. There are eight other units on the hall in between, all of them with balconies on the ocean-side. On any given week in summer, about seven of the condos are occupied by families of two or more (remember, these other people could be running all over the place; they don't have a plan.) On the highway side of the building, there is a street-level parking lot on your end and a three-story parking garage on the south end.
Let's say for the purpose of discussion that there a is fifty-fifty chance that the building will fall and a fifty-fifty chance that it could fall in either direction. Be as prepared as you can for anything, but realize you are taking chances no matter what you do.
Back to Lesson Plan
| ![]()
|
