Thursday, September 8, 2011

Standard earthquake brick strengthening found useless

Article


"Many of those rods just pulled straight out. We are still going through the process of finding how many times that happened. When there were failures that was the most common reason. The building owner spent money on this and these buildings were supposed to be strengthened," he said.
"This is a method that is widely used in California, so it is rather alarming. Some of the strengthening in California could suffer the same problem."

This is interesting.  What do you do with those damn bricks?  Everybody loves brick facades, and old brick buildings.  They add charm to neighbourhoods, and downtown areas.  Starbucks always burrows into them!

But they are killers.  Toronto loves to knock down the buildings and leave the facade, supported by steel.  Is this safe?  What happens after a few years of frost?  If the Virginia earthquake were to have been more significant, such as an M7?

No comments: