Main Content
Highlights
Measuring what earthquakes do inside buildings
If an earthquake strikes, what happens inside a building—particularly a building like a hospital? Until now it has been all but impossible to calculate. But in the US the University of Buffalo has just constructed the hardware to take such measurements—the world’s first apparatus that tests how a building’s “non-structural components” perform under seismic conditions.
As can be seen from the photo, “Ben”, the crash dummy, did not fair well as the test patient—and nor did much hospital equipment. Just before the quake started, “Ben” was sitting upright on his stretcher bed.
But as the artificial quake began, Ben went crashing to the ground and continued to be tossed “like a toy”. According to the university, what particularly surprised engineers was the fact that wall-mounted EKG monitors fell from their pedestals—especially when they had been attached to the wall in compliance with California’s current standards.
“These failures highlight some potential vulnerabilities that should be further studied,” said Professor Andre Filiatrault, who head’s the university’s Earthquake Simulation Laboratory.
Could it happen here? Possibly. In the first ten months of 2007, Western Australia experienced 11 earthquakes above 3.5 magnitude—including one in Shark Bay in February of that year that topped 5.3.
According to the University of WA, the most significant seismicity in the State of recent times was the major earthquake swarm at Burakin, about 200 km northeast of Perth, in 2001 and 2002. Several of those were above magnitude 5.
