Living with Earthquakes - Earthquake Engineering for Structural Design - page 57

(c)
Fi gure 2.15 1999 Turkey Izmit (Kocaeli) earthquake. (a) Location of earthquake;
North Anatolian fault; (b), (c) RC buildings collapse (USGS, nd)
of Turkey's industry. The predominant structural system used for buildings in
Turkey consists of reinforced concrete frames, with masonry infills. Unfortunately,
poor structural conception (soft stories, strong beams and weak columns) and
execution (low material qualities and poor detailing) caused the collapse of a large
number of buildings. This earthquake clearly demonstrated that improperly
constructed buildings kill people.
The last great earthquake of the 20 th Century was the 1999 Chi-Chi earthquake
(Fig. 2.16) (Wikipedia, nd), which devastated the geographical center of the
Taiwan island along the Chelungpu fault, being created from the subduction of the
Philippine tectonic plate beneath the Eurasia tectonic plate. Being one of the world
high earthquake risk regions, the island is heavily implemented with
instrumentation to record seismic data, having the possibility to record the near-
fault ground motion characteristics. Therefore, during the Chi-Chi earthquake very
high accelerations, velocities and vertical movements were recorded, never
recorded during other earthquakes. This gives to the specialists the possibility to
have a right imagine about the seismic actions striking the structures in the near-
fault areas. The powerful forces moved mountains, cut off rivers, caused
liquefaction and damaged bridges, highways and concrete dams and overturned
many high buildings. As in the case of the Izmit earthquake, the poor quality of
control at job sites has been blamed as the primary culprit for most building
damage.