A Closer Look to the Structural Damage in Christchurch

The recent visit of some members of the research group of Prof. G.Gazetas and Prof. E.Vintzileou (National Technical University of Athens) was the initiation of an effort to provide some explanations on several aspects of the Christchurch and Darfield earthquakes, following a multi-disciplinary approach,...

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4 WEEKS ON : PRELIMINARY RECONNAISSANCE REPORT FROM THE CHRISTCHURCH 22 FEB 2011 6.3MW EARTHQUAKE

4 Weeks on : Preliminary Reconnaissance REPORT FROM THE CHRISTCHURCH 22 Feb 2011 6.3Mw Earthquake Weng Y Kam[1] , Umut Akguzel[2] , Stefano Pampanin[3] Download the full report (with figures) here. **re-posted from the NZSEE Clearinghouse website. 1         Introduction 1.1      Note This...

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A Look at Building Stock and Insurance Impacts by Tao Lai

Outside of Christchurch’s Central Business District (CBD), the majority of buildings generally consist of low-rise wood-frame houses with brick veneer, which generally performed well under earthquake ground shaking. However, non-structural damage such as cracks in plasterboard and toppled chimneys...

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Industrial Buildings outside the CBD – 16MAR2011

Today I spent the day entirely outside the CBD. Nathan and I were following up on a contact given us by one of the volunteer engineers doing building assessments. The purpose of today was to look at damage to industrial facilities and how they fared during the recent event. We spent most of the day in...

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Concrete Observations

Failures of concrete structures by far the biggest threat to life-safety Even though there was a far greater number of unreinforced masonry building failures as compared to concrete structures, the collapse of midrise concrete structures led to a disproportionate loss of life. Non-ductile concrete...

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Industrial Non-Structural Damage – March 16th

Today our team of engineers visited several industrial facilities to the east of the Christchurch Central Business District, which is significantly closer to the epicenter of the February event. Several of the industrial businesses were located in pre-cast concrete tilt-up buildings which were observed...

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Retrofitted URM Buildings – March 15th Blog

Today our team of engineers reviewed several unreinforced masonry structures that were previously seismically retrofitted.  The performance of the retrofitted structures varied greatly.  The team observed multiple failures in retrofitted connections, as shown in the figure below, that had been installed...

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Report from the Field – 15MAR2011

The day started with rain which makes taking good photos difficult and makes everything a little bit harder. We started off the day looking specifically at partially or fully retrofitted unreinforced masonry (URM) buildings. Here in Christchurch there are a large number of URMs and a number of these...

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Structural Observations from Sri Sritharan

I arrived in Christchurch on March 1st, almost a week after the earthquake.  Rescue and recovery operations were still underway so are the building assessment and critical building projects among other activities. I mostly contributed to the critical building project and gathered as much of the perishable...

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Map of Damaged Buildings & Exterior Photos

Link to a Google map prepared by Ken Elwood and his graduate student of damaged buildings in Christchurch, with exterior photos: CLICK HERE FOR MAP

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