Structuresblog

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/