A call for passive survivability: a new design criterion helps preserve crucial life support in...

The human suffering and financial costs from Hurricane Katrina are immense: more than 1,200 fatalities, the dislocation of more than a million people, hundreds of thousands of homes destroyed or damaged, whole towns essentially leveled, more than $57 billion in insured losses--and counting. Not since the Chicago fire of 1871 and the 1909 San Francisco earthquake has such a large swath of American municipal infrastructure had to be rebuilt. From the disasters in Chicago and San Francisco, dramatic changes in building codes and construction practices were made to protect against fir