By the EERI Reconnaissance Team.
March 16, 2011. Earthquake Engineering Research Institute.
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 to have damage to their panel connection at both the roof and at adjacent panels. The industrial steel structures that were visited typically appeared to perform adequately with the exception of selected tension only bracing, which was observed to have failed in numerous structures. Liquefaction and heaving of slabs was observed at several industrial sites and often impacted the floor slabs to the extent that major floor slab remediation will be required to allow for high tolerance machinery to be re-aligned prior restarting the facilities.
In the industrial and commercial buildings that were visited outside the CDB, damaged drainage pipes, sprinkler lines and ducts were frequently observed. A the industrial facilities closer to the epicenter, large pieces of equipment (some weighing as much as 25,000 pounds) were observed to have been displaced up to 1 Meter from their original location. Employees in these facilities reported to have witnessed these heavy pieces of equipment “bouncing” as they were translated from their original position during the February event. A typical piece of the industrial equipment is shown in the Figures 1 and 2, along with a visual estimation of the translation that the equipment experienced during the February earthquake.
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| Figure 1. | Figure 2. | |
Learning from Earthquakes: First person reports
