Vulnerability assessment of reinforced concrete structures for fire and earthquake risk - Seismic Risk Analysis and Management of Civil Infrastructure Systems - page 363

The main effect from a seismic load on structures is the lateral load
induced by the earthquake, except for structures subjected to near fi eld
earthquakes. This is normally the main design load required by the codes/
standards, since building structures are more vulnerable to the effects from
the horizontal wave of the earthquake. This would perhaps be the main
reason that most of the research and studies have been focused on protec-
tion of structures against structural loads induced by the lateral component
of the seismic waves. For instance, for reinforced concrete columns, signifi -
cant amount of efforts have been made by researchers to develop models
for estimating damage and the ultimate load capacity of the columns due
to lateral loads, e.g. Park et al. (1982), Vecchio and Collins (1986), Lynn
et al. (1996), Elwood and Moehle (2005) and Mostafaei and Kabeyasawa
(2007).
There is still a lack of information on how structures would respond to
a scenario when there are consequent events after an earthquake, such as
a tsunami or fi re. Although including consequent events may complicate
the problem to solve in order to achieve a reliable and realistic assessment,
structures need to be evaluated, designed and protected considering all
practical loads and consequences.

14.4 Fire performance of a reinforced concrete

building following an earthquake

This is a scenario when a fi re started in a building due to, for example,
movement of a fi re source, such as a stove or furnace induced by a tremor.
In such a scenario, typically the building may suffer initial damage from the
earthquake and then undergo further damage as the result of exposure to
the fi re, following the earthquake. Depending on the amount of available
fuel, such a fi re could last anywhere from a few minutes to several hours.
Usually, the number of available fi rst responders or fi re-fi ghters is not as
many as required because of the need to respond to a large number of
incidents at the same time, as is normally the case after a natural disaster.
Therefore, full burn-out fi res would be expected in many of these post-
earthquake fi res. In other words, structures engulfed in a fi re following an
earthquake would experience considerable fi re damage, for a long duration,
depending on the fi re loads present in the structures.
This section explores a case study to provide a better understanding of
how structures would perform in such a full burning scenario, following an
earthquake. The case study investigates the vulnerability of a six-storey
building to a fi re following an earthquake using a numerical analysis tool.
The building was in fact tested in January 2006 under a seismic load repre-
senting the 1995 Kobe Earthquake ground motion, using the large-scale
shaking table facility in Miki (or Hyogo), Japan. Since detailed information