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by Dr. A. Naeem, Dr. Qaisar Ali, Muhammad Javed, Zakir Hussain, Amjad Naseer, Syed Muhammad Ali, Irshad Ahmed, and Muhammad Ashraf Earthquake Engineering Center at the Department of Civil Engineering, N-W.F.P. University of Engineering and Technology, Peshawar, Pakistan
General Information
An earthquake of Magnitude Mw = 7.6 occurred on October 8, 2005 at 08:50 am local time causing damage and casualties over an area of 30,000 km2 in the N-W.F.P. province of Pakistan and parts of Pakistan-administered Kashmir. The main event was followed by more than 978 aftershocks of Magnitude Mw = 4.0 and above, as of October 27, 2005. The epicenter of the main earthquake was located at a latitude of 34 29 35 N and longitude of 73 37 44 E. The focal depth of the main earthquake was determined to be 26 km (USGS). This was the deadliest earthquake in the recent history of the sub-continent resulting in more than eighty thousand casualties, two hundred thousand injured, and more than 4 million people who have been left homeless. The adverse effects of this earthquake are estimated to be larger than those of the tsunami of December 2004. The major cities and towns affected are Muzaffarabad, Bagh and Rawlakot in Kashmir and Balakot, Shinkiari, Batagram, Mansehra Abbotabad, Murree and Islamabad in Pakistan (Figure 1). Figure 2 shows a general view of the destruction caused by earthquake in Muzaffarabad. Almost all the buildings, mainly stone and block masonry laid in cement sand mortar with RC slabs or GI sheet roofing, collapsed in the areas close to the epicenter. In regions approximately 25 kms away from the epicenter nearly 25% of the buildings collapsed and 50% of the buildings were severely damaged. The structures in the affected region are primarily unreinforced stone, concrete block and brick masonry, and reinforced concrete frames with concrete block or brick masonry infill panels.
Stone masonry buildings were more common in the villages (75% of the building stock) than in the cities (15% of the building stock). The quality of mortar and stones used and the level of workmanship were very poor due to the poor economic situation of the people. The most commonly used mortars consisted of 1 part cement to 10 part sand. The approximate crushing and shear strength of such mortar is 300 Psi and 5 Psi respectively. The rounded and smooth stones in addition to the poor quality of mortar rendered a very loose bond between the stones which made the structures extremely vulnerable to earthquake forces. No horizontal bond beams were provided at the levels of plinth, or roof. Lintel beams were provided only above the openings and were not run continuously along the perimeter of the walls. No vertical members of concrete or wood were provided in the walls and therefore the collapse of a particular portion of the wall progressed in an uninterrupted manner to other portions of the walls and buildings. In some cases, certainly due to economic constraints, the stones were observed to have been laid even dry (no mortar at all) and the gaps were filled by small pieces of stones, leaving the walls extremely vulnerable to horizontal ground shaking.
workmanship, good quality mortar was used in the construction of brick masonry buildings. However no evidence of either bond beams or other earthquake resistance improvement techniques were found in such buildings. It is also worth mentioning that 4.5 inch thick brick masonry walls collapsed or were badly damaged in almost all buildings of the affected areas, which in some cases resulted in the collapse of the entire building (Figure 5).
Epicenter
Figure Figure 3: 3: Failure Failure of of unreinforced unreinforced stone stone masonry masonry walls walls in in Muzaffarabad. Muzaffarabad
Figure 4: Collapse of unreinforced concrete block masonry houses in Kamsar near Muzaffarabad (Latitude N34o 24.6 and Longitude E73o 28.5)
Figure 6: Collapse of Sangam Hotel, a 5 story RC frame building in Domel, Muzaffarabad `` Longitude E73o 28.3) (Latitude N34o 21.3
Figure 7: Formation of plastic hinge in the column near the beam-column joint in a hospital building in Mansehra