Earthquake Reconnaisance Team in Italy, Day 1
Day 1: Report from Ricardo Hernandez
The first day of the reconnaissance was filled with adventure. After eating lunch, we were off to L’Aquila. The historic center core heavily protected by local police and firemen. Even inspectors are prohibited from entering the historic core, concentrating their efforts on the structures that surround the historic core.
The structures located outside of the historic core are typically constructed of unreinforced masonry or buildings with a reinforced concrete frame(beams/columns) with hollow clay tile infill partitions. From our observations of the reinforced concrete frame structures, we have frequently seen little damage to the concrete frames. There are occurrences of hollow clay tile that has undergone a shear mechanism or experienced out-of-plane failure due to lack of anchors at the top/bottom of the walls.
We have obtained the ground motion records from the 4 instruments in the area. Today we located one of the records. Tomorrow, we intend to locate the remaining three instruments and to observe the earthquake damage at the San Salvatore Hospital.
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