Degenkolb / Earthquake
Chris Poland finds lessons for the Bay Area in Haiti and Chile’s quakes
KALW’s Ben Trefny sat down with Chris Poland and asked him what engineers have learned from the recent earthquakes in Haiti and Chile.
Earthquake
Degenkolb Reconnaissance Team in Haiti - Last two days
Our last two days in Haiti were less eventful; especially compared to the first 7 days. We had tried to set-up some building assessment activity and some meetings for Sunday but those plans fell through. We instead used the opportunity to consolidate our observations and start working on the next steps.
We also used the opportunity to explore Port-au-Prince and Petionville a bit more. When we returned from Petionville very late in the evening on Sunday, it was amazing how ...
Degenkolb / Earthquake
King 5 Seattle News - Stacy Bartoletti and David Gonzalez comment on Chile Earthquake and Recent Reconnaissance Trip
Engineers return from quake zone in Chile with good news
Earthquake
Degenkolb Reconnaissance Team in Haiti - Day 7
Blog Day 7: Saturday March 27th
Downtown Port au Prince We decided to start our Saturday morning at the market – the Iron Market or Marche de Fer, a light steel frame building from 1889 that was originally intended for the Cairo train station but instead was brought to Port au Prince. The building is set among a lively retail section (although it appears sellers outnumber buyers by a wide margin) along the streets in the middle of downtown Port ...
Earthquake
Degenkolb Reconnaissance Team in Haiti - Day 6
Day 6
In the morning, we reviewed some more traditional "gingerbread" colombage construction homes – there was a cluster of these homes in the Bois Verna area of Port Au Prince. As observed previously, these structures generally performed very well. Most of the problems in these buildings were related to poorly constructed concrete/masonry porticos that appear to have been added at a later date. A couple of the homes were seriously deteriorated due to wood rot and general ...
Earthquake
Degenkolb Reconnaissance Team in Haiti - Day 5
Day 5
Highlights: 1. The seismic performance of the buildings constructed with the gingerbread architectural style continues to amaze. We studied four adjacent buildings, of which one was a house of the gingerbread style, and the gingerbread house was the only one standing or habitable. 2. The Portail St. Joseph area had frequent failures of brick URM's. This is the greatest concentration of brick URM's that we have seen so far. 3. One wheel barrow of recycled rebar = 40 ...