An entry from Deborah Fitchett's blog for 13 October 2010, posted to Dreamwidth. The entry is titled, "In which her house is shaking again".The entry was downloaded on 17 April 2015.
An entry from Deborah Fitchett's blog for 13 October 2010, posted to Livejournal. The entry is titled, "In which her house is shaking again".The entry was downloaded on 14 April 2015.
Copthorne Hotel after the February 2011 earthquake; the opened windows showed the impact of the shaking.
CPL Willie Apiata shaking the hand of a Police Officer at the Christchurch Earthquake Memorial Service in Hagley Park.
Photograph captioned by BeckerFraserPhotos, "The violent shaking on February 22 snapped off this road sign. (Linwood Avenue)".
Wayne Mapp, the Minister of Defence, shaking the hand of an officer during his visit to the HMNZS Otago in Lyttelton.
A photograph of a sign reading, "Please slow down, your speed is shaking our homes." The photograph is captioned by Paul Corliss, "Kaiapoi".
A photograph of a sign reading, "Please slow down, your speed is shaking our homes." The photograph is captioned by Paul Corliss, "Kaiapoi".
Chief of the New Zealand Defence Force, Rhys Jones, shaking the hand of an officer during his visit to the HMNZS Otago in Lyttelton.
A drain in an apartment driveway which has broken away from the curb during the shaking, and has a crack now visible on the left side.
A photograph of a sign reading "Please slow down, your speed is shaking our homes". The photograph is captioned by BeckerFraserPhotos, "Cass Street, Kaiapoi".
Buildings subject to earthquake shaking will tend to move not only horizontally but also rotate in plan. In-plan rotation is known as “building torsion” and it may occur for a variety of reasons, including stiffness and strength eccentricity and/or torsional effects from ground motions. Methods to consider torsion in structural design standards generally involve analysis of the structure in its elastic state. This is despite the fact that the structural elements can yield, thereby significantly altering the building response and the structural element demands. If demands become too large, the structure may collapse. While a number of studies have been conducted into the behavior of structures considering inelastic building torsion, there appears to be no consensus that one method is better than another and as a result, provisions within current design standards have not adopted recent proposals in the literature. However, the Canterbury Earthquakes Royal Commission recently made the recommendation that provisions to account for inelastic torsional response of buildings be introduced within New Zealand building standards. Consequently, this study examines how and to what extent the torsional response due to system eccentricity may affect the seismic performance of a building and considers what a simple design method should account for. It is concluded that new methods should be simple, be applicable to both the elastic and inelastic range of response, consider bidirectional excitation and include guidance for multi-story systems.
A video of a presentation by Professor David Johnston during the fourth plenary of the 2016 People in Disasters Conference. Johnston is a Senior Scientist at GNS Science and Director of the Joint Centre for Disaster Research in the School of Psychology at Massey University. The presentation is titled, "Understanding Immediate Human Behaviour to the 2010-2011 Canterbury Earthquake Sequence, Implications for injury prevention and risk communication".The abstract for the presentation reads as follows: The 2010 and 2011 Canterbury earthquake sequences have given us a unique opportunity to better understand human behaviour during and immediately after an earthquake. On 4 September 2010, a magnitude 7.1 earthquake occurred near Darfield in the Canterbury region of New Zealand. There were no deaths, but several thousand people sustained injuries and sought medical assistance. Less than 6 months later, a magnitude 6.2 earthquake occurred under Christchurch City at 12:51 p.m. on 22 February 2011. A total of 182 people were killed in the first 24 hours and over 7,000 people injured overall. To reduce earthquake casualties in future events, it is important to understand how people behaved during and immediately after the shaking, and how their behaviour exposed them to risk of death or injury. Most previous studies have relied on an analysis of medical records and/or reflective interviews and questionnaire studies. In Canterbury we were able to combine a range of methods to explore earthquake shaking behaviours and the causes of injuries. In New Zealand, the Accident Compensation Corporation (a national health payment scheme run by the government) allowed researchers to access injury data from over 9,500 people from the Darfield (4 September 2010) and Christchurch (22 February 2011 ) earthquakes. The total injury burden was analysed for demography, context of injury, causes of injury, and injury type. From the injury data inferences into human behaviour were derived. We were able to classify the injury context as direct (immediate shaking of the primary earthquake or aftershocks causing unavoidable injuries), and secondary (cause of injury after shaking ceased). A second study examined people's immediate responses to earthquakes in Christchurch New Zealand and compared responses to the 2011 earthquake in Hitachi, Japan. A further study has developed a systematic process and coding scheme to analyse earthquake video footage of human behaviour during strong earthquake shaking. From these studies a number of recommendations for injury prevention and risk communication can be made. In general, improved building codes, strengthening buildings, and securing fittings will reduce future earthquake deaths and injuries. However, the high rate of injuries incurred from undertaking an inappropriate action (e.g. moving around) during or immediately after an earthquake suggests that further education is needed to promote appropriate actions during and after earthquakes. In New Zealand - as in US and worldwide - public education efforts such as the 'Shakeout' exercise are trying to address the behavioural aspects of injury prevention.
A pile of gravel and tarseal in front of a house in Richmond. The photographer comments, "River Rd repairs. We weren't living in our house, we'd moved out after the September 2010 shake".
A photograph of a mime shaking the hand of a young boy at a market in Cathedral Square. The market was held as part of Cantebury Tales - a carnivalesque procession and the main event of FESTA 2013.
A common scene around Christchurch, following the 7.1 magnitude earthquake that hit the city on Saturday September 4, 2010 at around 4:33am. The shake left many roads cracked, buildings demolished, and flooding in the streets.
The now vacated Christchurch City Council building suffered some damage in the magnitude 7.1 earthquake that struck Christchurch on Saturday 4 September 2010.
The now vacated Christchurch City Council building suffered some damage in the magnitude 7.1 earthquake that struck Christchurch on Saturday 4 September 2010.
Members of the New Zealand Fire Service and USAID Disaster Assistance Response Team (DART) shaking hands outside the Christchurch City Fire Station on Kilmore Street. DART travelled to Christchurch after the 22 February 2011 earthquake to help out in the relief efforts.
Prime Minister John Key shaking the hand of the Al Dwyer, the leader of the USAID Disaster Assistance Response Team (DART) outside the US headquarters in Latimer Square. John Key is visiting to thank DART for their efforts in the aftermath of the 22 February 2011 earthquake.
A photograph of the earthquake damage to a building in central Christchurch. The basement of the building has collapsed and the concrete blocks have broken away from each other. The left corner of the building has also suffered damage, with many of the concrete blocks shaking loose.
Damage to a house in Richmond. The brick wall is badly cracked and twisted, and some bricks have fallen, exposing the lining paper below. The driveway is cracked and covered in liquefaction. The photographer comments, "These photos show our old house in River Rd. More shaking damage on the east wall of the living room at our house".
Damage to a house in Richmond. The brick wall is badly cracked and twisted, and some bricks have fallen, exposing the lining paper and framing below. The driveway is cracked and covered in liquefaction. The photographer comments, "These photos show our old house in River Rd and recovery work around Richmond and St Albans. More shaking damage on the east wall of the living room at our house".
Damage to a house in Richmond. The brick wall is badly cracked and twisted, and some bricks have fallen, exposing the lining paper and framing below. The driveway is cracked and covered in liquefaction. The photographer comments, "These photos show our old house in River Rd and recovery work around Richmond and St Albans. More shaking damage on the east wall of the living room at our house".
Detail of damage to a house in Richmond. A double-brick wall has collapsed. A wire loop which formerly tied the two layers of bricks together has pulled out from one of the layers, showing how the two parts of the wall moved apart during the shaking. The photographer comments, "These photos show our old house in River Rd and recovery work around Richmond and St Albans. The remaining double brick by the back door has been further smashed and twisted".
This thesis investigates life-safety risk in earthquakes. The first component of the thesis utilises a dataset of earthquake injuries and deaths from recent earthquakes in New Zealand to identify cause, context, and risk factors of injury and death in the 2011 MW6.3 Christchurch earthquake and 2016 MW7.8 Kaikōura earthquake. Results show that nearly all deaths occurred from being hit by structural elements from buildings, while most injuries were caused by falls, strains and being hit by contents or non-structural elements. Statistical analysis of injured cases compared to an uninjured control group found that age, gender, building damage, shaking intensity, and behaviour during shaking were the most significant risk factors for injury during these earthquakes. The second part of the thesis uses the empirical findings from the first section to develop two tools for managing life-safety risk in earthquakes. The first tool is a casualty estimation model for health system and emergency response planning. An existing casualty model used in New Zealand was validated against observed data from the 2011 Christchurch earthquake and found to underestimate moderate and severe injuries by an order of magnitude. The model was then updated to include human behaviour such as protective actions, falls and strain type injuries that are dependent on shaking intensity, as well as injuries and deaths outside buildings. These improvements resulted in a closer fit to observed casualties for the 2011 Christchurch earthquake. The second tool that was developed is a framework to set seismic loading standards for design based on fatality risk targets. The proposed framework extends the risk-targeted hazard method, by moving beyond collapse risk targets, to fatality risk targets for individuals in buildings and societal risk in cities. The framework also includes treatment of epistemic uncertainty in seismic hazard to allow this uncertainty to be used in risk-based decision making. The framework is demonstrated by showing how the current New Zealand loading standards could be revised to achieve uniform life-safety risk across the country and how the introduction of a new loading factor can reduce risk aggregation in cities Not on Alma, moved and emailed. 1/02/2023 ce
Observations in major earthquakes have shown that rockable structures suffered less to no damage. During rocking, that is, partial and temporary footing separations, the influx of seismic energy is interrupted and thus the impact of the base excitation is reduced. Rocking causes the structure to deform more rigid like. Consequently, the structure experiences less deformation along the height and thus a lower damage potential. Although many researchers have studied the influence of rockable footings, most of these are either analytical or numerical, and only a very few structures have been built with rockable footings worldwide, for example, the chimney at Christchurch Airport and the South Rangitikei Viaduct in New Zealand. Despite these studies, a thorough and understanding is not yet available, especially with respect to experimental validations. This work is the first to investigate the rocking behaviour of bridges with different slenderness using large‐scale shake table experiments. To limit the number of influence factors, a stiff footing support and the same fixed‐base fundamental frequency of the bridges were assumed. The result shows that the girder displacement and the footing rotation of the tall bridge do not always move in phase, which cannot be observed in the short bridge. The results demonstrate the important role of slenderness in the overall responses of rockable bridges. This behaviour cannot be observed in bridges with a commonly assumed fixed base since the slenderness effect cannot be activated
Results from a series of 1D seismic effective stress analyses of natural soil deposits from Christchurch are summarized. The analysed soil columns include sites whose performance during the 2010-2011 Canterbury earthquakes varied significantly, from no liquefaction manifestation at the ground surface to very severe liquefaction, in which case a large area of the site was covered by thick soil ejecta. Key soil profile characteristics and response mechanisms affecting the severity of surface liquefaction manifestation and subsequent damage are explored. The influence of shaking intensity on the triggering and contribution of these mechanisms is also discussed. Careful examination of the results highlights the importance of considering the deposit as a whole, i.e. a system of layers, including interactions between layers in the dynamic response and through pore water pressure redistribution and water flow.
Soil-structure interaction (SSI) has been widely studied during the last decades. The influence of the properties of the ground motion, the structure and the soil have been addressed. However, most of the studies in this field consider a stand-alone structure. This assumption is rarely justifiable in dense urban areas where structures are built close to one another. The dynamic interaction between adjacent structures has been studied since the early 1970s, mainly using numerical and analytical models. Even though the early works in this field have significantly contributed to understanding this problem, they commonly consider important simplifications such as assuming a linear behaviour of the structure and the soil. Some experimental works addressing adjacent structures have recently been conducted using geotechnical centrifuges and 1g shake tables. However, further research is needed to enhance the understanding of this complex phenomenon. A particular case of SSI is that of structures founded in fine loose saturated sandy soil. An iconic example was the devastating effects of liquefaction in Christchurch, New Zealand, during the Canterbury earthquake in 2011. In the case of adjacent structures on liquefiable soil, the experimental evidence is even scarcer. The present work addresses the dynamic interaction between adjacent structures by performing multiple experimental studies. The work starts with two-adjacent structures on a small soil container to expose the basics of the problem. Later, results from tests considering a more significant number of structures on a big laminar box filled with sand are presented. Finally, the response of adjacent structures on saturated sandy soil is addressed using a geotechnical centrifuge and a large 1g shake table. This research shows that the acceleration, lateral displacement, foundation rocking, damping ratio, and fundamental frequency of the structure of focus are considerably affected by the presence of neighbouring buildings. In general, adjacent buildings reduced the dynamic response of the structure of focus on dry sand. However, the acceleration was amplified when the structures had a similar fundamental frequency. In the case of structures on saturated sand, the presence of adjacent structures reduced the liquefaction potential. Neighbouring structures on saturated sand also presented larger rotation of the footing and lateral displacement of the top mass than that of the stand-alone case
At 00:02 on 14 November, 2016 a destructive 7.8 Mw earthquake struck the North Canterbury region of New Zealand’s South Island. Prior to and following the earthquake, natural and social scientists conducted a significant amount of research on the resilience processes and recovery efforts in North Canterbury. This thesis examines community resilience in Kaikōura, a small town and district greatly impacted by the earthquake. Community resilience has been widely used in disaster risk reduction research, policy, and practice to describe how a group of individuals within a boundary respond to events, hazards, and shifts in their everyday life. Using exploratory inquiry, this thesis adopts qualitative research methods including document analysis, 24 semi-structured interviews, and participant observation to explore the idea that the recent scholarly emphasis on resilience has come at the expense of critical engagement with the complexities of communities. I draw on the idea of ‘collectives’ (comprising community-based organisations or less formal social networks with a shared purpose) as a lens to consider how, when unexpected life events happen, collectives can be regarded as a resource for change or constancy. The examination of collectives following a disaster can lend insight into the many elements of community as they bring people together in collaboration or drive them apart in conflict. This thesis therefore contributes to an enhanced practical and theoretical understanding of both community and resilience.