By James R. Martin, Carl Benson, Martin Chapman, Morgan Eddy, Russell Green, Annie Kammerer, Sam Lasley, Carlos Lazarte, Sissy Nikolaou, Burak Tanyu, Martitia Tuttle, Mark Carter, and Brett Maurer.
October 2011, Geotechnical Extreme Events Reconnaissance.
This report presents findings from the reconnaissance efforts to date. Geotechnical reconnaissance was organized into four regions, including the epicentral area, Richmond and Eastern Virginia, the National Capital region, and distant sites. Findings are grouped and presented in this manner. We focused on documenting ground failure, such as liquefaction, along with the performance of bridges and other lifelines, dams and embankments, building foundations, landfills, and critical facilities within each region. Although few ground failures were suspected, our philosophy is that it is of equal significance to study sites where failure did not occur, especially in the epicentral region where PGAs were relatively high. Careful documentation of this earthquake is of added importance due to the sparseness of recorded motions and modern documentation of seismic performance in the eastern US.
