Day 4 – Chile Earthquake 2010 – Video footage of Alto Rio Apartment Building
Day 4 – Chile Earthquake 2010 – Video footage of Alto Rio Apartment Building
Bldg ID 3-10.2
Alto Rio Bldg (36⁰ 49′ 41″, 73⁰ 03′ 41″)
This concrete apartment building built in 2009 (currently not shown on Google Earth) has been strewn across all media channels. When we arrived, we were shocked and in awe of the devastating force this earthquake produced. Survivors were giving testimonials of their earthquake and survival experience. Our tour guide was very sad and on the verge of tears after seeing the site in person. The 16-story structure, with 2 levels below for parking housed approximately 80 tenants. There were approximately 8 fatalities. The search and rescue effort ended yesterday with the last victim found. The lateral system consisted of shear walls in both directions. It is not immediately clear how the building failed due to significant search and rescue efforts that may have increased the amount of damage to the structure (holes cut into slabs, adjacent soil excavated, various elements leaning on the wall, etc.). It appears that the building failed in shear at the base. The structure toppled over and broke in half and went through the basement slab of the adjacent building site (the foundations and 1st floor slab were completed for another apartment building of the same design on the adjacent site). We observed the 8″ thick shearwalls had #3 bars at 8″o.c. with 4 #7 boundary bars typically. A neighboring building of similar construction was still standing.
