While doing
relief work in Haiti following the devastating earthquake there on January 12, 2010, Palmer Chichen observed firsthand the tragedy of building a house with a lot of sand and not enough steel:
There was a problem in Haiti. Houses were built with too much sand and not enough steel. Sand is cheap, so because of poverty, when many Haitians built
their cement-block homes, they used more sand than they should have in their mortar mix. And because steel is expensive, they didn't use enough steel in the columns and ring beams. So when the ground quaked, homes crumbled; there was too much sand and not enough steel. It was a tragedy of poverty.*
