Survey of Damage from Japan’s March 11th Earthquake and Tsunami, presentation by Kit Miyamoto
A colleague forwarded a link to a very interesting presentation by a Japanese engineer who surveyed the earthquake damage at various locations along the coast. It contains a lot more engineering information than all of the media reports I have seen.
Some interesting notes:
- Strong shaking does not seem to have caused much if any structural damage. Tsunami damage was the dominant event.
- Some types of construction (steel, concrete) resisted the tsunami better than others (wood).
- He estimates that Tsunami warning systems that were in place saved hundreds of thousands of lives.
Here’s the link: http://peer.berkeley.edu/events/2011/03/early-field-survey-miyamoto-japan-eqk/