Mexico earthquake crumbles concrete buildings, sending deadly warning to California

A building that survived the last earthquake will not necessarily survive the next one. (Sept. 21, 2017)

By Rong-Gong Lin II
Contact Reporter

Seismic safety experts have long warned that brittle concrete frame
buildings pose a particularly deadly risk during a major earthquake. But a
horrifying video taken during this weeks earthquake may do more to
highlight the risk than years of reports and studies.
Sirens blare, utility poles sway. Then in the background, a wobbly building
is seen. Concrete starts falling out of a ground-floor column.
Then the columns flex and the upper floors come crashing down, sinking
into a cloud of dust.
Dios mo! Dios mo! a woman can be heard saying. My God! My God!
The magnitude 7.1 earthquake dramatically offered proof of the dangers of
these buildings. The crumbled private Enrique Rebsamen school in Mexico
City, a three-story building that left at least 25 dead including 21 students
believed to be 7 or 8 years old and the site of a frantic rescue effort that
captured worldwide attention, was made of concrete, as were many other
structures that fell to the ground.
Aqu el momento donde un edificio, al parecer en la C olonia R oma colapsa.

With a stout, muscular appearance, concrete buildings appear to be solid.

But without a robust level of steel reinforcement, their brittle columns can
start peeling off chunks of concrete and then explode when exposed to
violent side-to-side shaking.
Collapses of concrete buildings have been documented worldwide for
decades. It was first well documented in Los Angeles nearly half a century
ago.
Dozens died when concrete structures in Los Angeles tumbled in the 1971
magnitude 6.1 Sylmar earthquake; including several who perished on a
newly built hospital campus. Other concrete buildings collapsed during the
1994 Northridge 6.7 quake. Two concrete office towers collapsed during the
6.3 temblor in Christchurch, New Zealand, in 2011, killing 133 people
making up more than 70% of the final death toll.
Officials quickly updated building requirements after the 1971 earthquake
to add more steel reinforcement to new concrete buildings. But there was
no systematic effort by many governments around the world to address the
defect in existing concrete buildings.
ITS SUCH A TREMENDOUS IMPACT

Mexico quake shows what seismic experts have

long warned
Concrete buildings dot the California landscape, a popular form of
construction during the postwar boom years.
But cities are just now beginning to grapple with how to make these
buildings safer.
In 2015, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti pushed through a landmark law
mandating retrofits of brittle concrete buildings, hoping to avoid a
catastrophe when the next earthquake comes. The city estimates there are
about 1,500 concrete buildings in Los Angeles alone.
The new law requires that once owners are given an order to evaluate their
building, they will have 25 years to retrofit it if a study determines their
building is indeed vulnerable. City officials are in the process of identifying
possible concrete buildings that would be subject to the law.
A couple of other cities have done the same. Santa Monica earlier this year
published a list of vulnerable buildings concrete, steel and wood-frame
apartments and passed a new law requiring them to be evaluated and
retrofitted if found to be vulnerable. West Hollywood has also passed its
own retrofit laws for the same classes of buildings.
Seismic safety experts say the catastrophic images from Mexico this week
will raise awareness of the dangers.
The collapsed school is a case in point. California-based structural
engineers who looked at a Los Angeles Times photo of the schools remains
said the collapse is consistent with the failure of a brittle concrete building.
What was once a three-story building at the Enrique Rebsamen school collapsed. Structural
engineers in California say this photo shows how concrete columns snapped -- an indication
that not enough steel reinforcing bars were embedded in the concrete to stabilize the
columns. (Gary Coronado / Los Angeles Times)

Structural engineer David Cocke, vice president of the Earthquake

Engineering Research Institute, a global research group based in Oakland,
pointed out how a concrete column at the school can be seen broken in half
a clean break. He said there should have been more steel reinforcement
in the concrete that would have allowed the column to bend when shaken,
and not break, like a piece of chalk.
When they break in half like that, then youve lost it all, said Cocke,
president of Gardena-based Structural Focus and spokesman for the
Structural Engineers Assn. of Southern California.
It looked like the columns popped out of the building theres no
adequate reinforcement, said Kit Miyamoto, a member of the California
Seismic Safety Commission and CEO of the global structural engineering
company Miyamoto International. Its exactly the problem of nonductile
[brittle] concrete.
Miyamoto said the video showing the concrete building collapsing has
such a tremendous impact. Most people think that they are helpless, its
too expensive to fix. Thats a myth. This video can defeat that myth.
Evidence exists, people are dying and we know exactly what to do."
Actually being able to physically see the process I think its incredibly
effective. It explains what a lot of the issues are, added seismologist Lucy
Jones. Concrete buildings seem sturdy and being able to see directly
why thats not true has got to start.
To be sure, some buildings in developing nations like Mexico are not as
well-engineered as some buildings in California, said Cocke, the structural
engineer. But, these buildings are not that dissimilar to some of our worst
buildings. Were going to have failures on some of our older, nonductile
concrete buildings that can be catastrophic when we have intense
shaking.
The video, Cocke said, also shows the threat of buildings with flimsy first
stories, where relatively skinny columns hold up heavier upper floors. The
so-called soft-story flaw is found in many California apartments, where
the ground floor is built to house carports, garages or storefronts; flimsy
supports can snap and collapse in shaking.
Other cities are looking at the issue. Jones is now working with the
Southern California Assn. of Governments to help cities come up with
seismic retrofit legislation to propose to their elected leaders. Jones said
Long Beach is looking to hire a consultant to create an inventory of
seismically vulnerable buildings. And Ventura has directed its city staff to
work with Jones and SCAG to develop an approach for unretrofitted brick
buildings and wood apartment buildings with flimsy first stories.
Older concrete buildings in Los Angeles (Los Angeles Times)

PEOPLE DIE IN BUILDING COLLAPSES

The grim toll of concrete buildings

The defect gained considerable attention after the 1971 Sylmar earthquake
caused the collapse of the newly constructed Olive View Medical Center.
Several other concrete structures came tumbling down in that earthquake,
in which 52 people were killed just from concrete structure failure alone.
Brittle concrete buildings also collapsed in the 1994 Northridge
earthquake, including a Bullocks department store and Kaiser Permanente
medical office.
Other efforts to strengthen vulnerable buildings showed signs of success.
Los Angeles 1981 law requiring retrofitting of 8,000 brick buildings saved
lives: Although 60 people died in the Northridge quake, none of them were
in brick structures.
L.A. and a handful of other cities in California are now also requiring
retrofits for apartment buildings with weak first stories.
But retrofitting concrete buildings is considered more costly. The fixes
could cost $1 million or more. Occupants may have to move out during the
renovation at an additional cost.
Yet a seismic retrofit would not only save lives, its a bargain compared with
the cost of replacing a collapsed building, Miyamoto said, which will be
unusable and unable to generate rental income for owners. There is no
excuse to not do it, Miyamoto said. Its spending 5% to 10% of the
replacement cost to address the seismic strengthening.

Two concrete buildings at the San Fernando Veterans Administration Hospital crumbled in
the 1971 Sylmar earthquake, killing 49 people. (Bruce Cox / Los Angeles Times)

The Pyne Gould Corp. building collapsed when the magnitude 6.3 earthquake struck
Christchurch, New Zealand. It was built in the 1960s, before the adoption of modern seismic
standards for concrete buildings. (Hannah Johnston / Getty Images)

WE DONT REALLY KNOW WHATS GOING TO HAPPEN

Sober lessons from Mexico

The experience in this weeks Mexico earthquake also illustrates another
fact: Just because your home or workplace survived a previous earthquake
doesnt mean it will endure the next one.
A common sentiment in Los Angeles, as in Mexico City, was that buildings
that survived past earthquakes were invulnerable to shaking. Thats wrong.
Despite several devastating quakes in 1933 in Long Beach, 1971 in Sylmar
and 1994 in Northridge many vulnerable buildings constructed during
Southern Californias rapid expansion in the 20th century simply have not
had to face the intense shaking that scientists know can happen during an
earthquake.
The last magnitude 7.8 quake that struck Southern California hit in 1857,
long before the modern era of Los Angeles.
I hear quite often, Hey, we went through the 1994 Northridge earthquake.
Were OK. Well, thats a false sense of security, Miyamoto said. This
earthquake proved it. Doing well in one earthquake doesnt mean youll do
well in the next.
At its closest point, the San Andreas fault is just 30 miles away from
downtown L.A. That closeness means the tallest skyscrapers in the nations
second-largest city could be quite vulnerable during a megaquake.
A U.S. Geological Survey simulation co-authored by Jones and published
in 2008 said it was plausible that five steel high-rise buildings throughout
Southern California whether in downtown L.A., Orange County or San
Bernardino could come tumbling down should a magnitude 7.8
earthquake strike the San Andreas.
After the 1994 Northridge earthquake, a flaw was discovered in a common
type of steel building that showed how the frame can fracture in an
earthquake; Los Angeles and most other cities in California have not passed
laws requiring retrofits to repair this design flaw.
We dont really know whats going to happen to those really tall buildings.
Weve never put them through a really big earthquake, Jones said.
Downtown L.A.s shortest buildings also havent been tested with extreme
shaking, Jones said. At no point in modern history has downtown Los
Angeles endured the kind of intense shaking that the San Fernando Valley
did during the 1994 Northridge earthquake.
Your Northridge-type earthquake is about as bad as it gets for small
buildings like a single-family house or a small apartment complex, Jones
said. But while places like Northridge and Chatsworth have endured what
is close to the worst-case shaking, places a bit farther away like Pasadena,
Hollywood and downtown L.A. have not.
Even Santa Monica has not, she said, despite the intensity of damage in
that coastal city during the 94 quake, Jones said. The reason there was so
much damage there was because of how old the buildings are.
Different earthquakes will test different buildings.
In the Los Angeles area, a sharp magnitude 7 earthquake on an urban fault
that runs through the metropolitan region such as the Newport-
Inglewood, Whittier or Sierra Madre faults will test short buildings like
no other earthquake in the modern era, Jones said.
Meanwhile, a magnitude 8 on the San Andreas fault likely will spare the
worst from striking single-family homes in places farther away from the
fault, including the L.A. Basin. But the same megaquake could result in
collapses of high-rises at relatively large distances from the fault, Jones
said.
Miyamoto said L.A. is on the right track in retrofit policy, but should
consider accelerating the deadline for retrofit requirement.
We should go faster, he said. The earthquake will not wait for us.
Cyclists roll past the remains of a collapsed Kaiser Permanente clinic and office building in
Granada Hills following the Northridge earthquake. (Jonathan Alcorn / For The Times)