Earthquake Engineering Research Institute
Learning From Earthquakes

Post-earthquake surveys of dams

 Post-earthquake surveys of dams Date:                                19/10/16 Building typology:          Dams Municipality:                   Rieti and L’Aquila provinces Epicentral distance:           from about 7 km to about 20 km Description […]

Lake Maninjau Landslides

The southern quarter of the lake experienced much greater ground motion than the rest of the lake , and this resulted in majorlandsliding on the southern rim of the crater.  Approximately 25% of the southern rim experienced slides, burying parts of villages and displacing at least 2000 residents. Most of the slides were not extremely […]

Geotechnical Engineering Reconnaissance of the 2010 Haiti Earthquake

The earthquake epicenter was located immediately west of the city of Port-au-Prince, and the damage induced by this event was extreme. It is estimated that over 200,000 people were killed during the earthquake, and several hundred thousand injured. A strike-slip Mw = 7 event that affects ground near the margins of a bay represents a […]

Soil Liquefaction Observations

 About 5 hours after the earthquake I went down to the shore of the Villarrica Lake Temuco, and observed a very strange phenomena. Some googling showed that a possible explanation is soil liquefaction. This was later confirmed by Lisa Wald from USGS who recommended posting on this website. On some places at the beach, which is essentially […]

Preliminary Report on Geotechnical Effects of the 2010 Chile Earthquake

GEER Team Leaders: Jonathan Bray, UC Berkeley; Terry Elderidge, Golder Associates; David Frost, Georgia Tech; Youssef Hashash, University of Illinois; Robert Kayen, US Geological Survey; Christian Ledezma, Pontificia Univ. Catolica de Chile; Rob Moss, California Polytechnic Univ., San Luis Obispo; Ramon Verdugo, Universidad de Chile. Lead Authors: Pedro Arduino, Scott Ashford, Dominic Assimaki, Jonathan Bray, […]

First Impressions from New Zealand

The themes of the M7.1 Canterbury earthquake are URMs and liquefaction, with the following qualifications: Christchurch is only in a moderate zone and an M7 at 30 k was not expected. However, the ground motions, for whatever reasons, were in general less than the zoned spectra. While not zero, there was very little structural damage […]