English
1984
ISBN: 0860083616
PDF
pages: 640

The protection of cities from earthquake damage and the protection of the inhabitants from injury and loss of life are the responsibilities of engineers. Unfortunately, many earthquake disasters have occurred during the present century. The most famous of these are San Francisco, California 1906, Messina, Italy 1908，Tokyo, Japan 1923, and Tangshan, China 1976. In addition, there have been many less well known earthquake disasters during the past 80 years in Nicaragua, El Salvador, Guatemala, Venezuela, Chile, Argentina, Peru, Columbia, Italy, Yugoslavia, Morocco, Turkey, Iran, India, the Philippines, China, Japan, Alaska, and others. Whether or not an earthquake causes a disaster depends on the following three items: 1) the magnitude of the event, 2) the distance of the causative fault from the city, and 3) the degree of preparedness in the city. If the earthquake is of small magnitude the shaking will not be sufficiently violent to cause extensive damage ； if a large magnitude earthquake is distant from a city the ground shaking will not be strong; if a city is well-prepared even a large, close earthquake will not cause a disaster. However, if an earthquake of large magnitude occurs close to a city which is unprepared the result will be a great disaster. A classic example of such a situation is the disastrous Tangshan, China earthquake of 1976. This M7.8 shock centered under the city, which had no seismic requirements in the building code ； because the buildings were not designed to resist strong shaking, the result was extensive collapse of structures and several hundred thousand deaths. It is worth noting that in the preceeding earthquake disasters it was observed that some well-engineered structures survived the ground shaking with minimal damage.

Download File Size:55.96 MB

---