EERI Special Earthquake Report — May 2010 Learning from Earthquakes The Mw 7.0 Haiti Earthquake of January 12, 2010: Report #2 This second insert on the Haiti The ASCE TCLEE team included area, including the provinces earthquake covers engineering Curt Edwards, Psomas, (team lead- (known as departments) of Ouest, failures and the social impacts of er); Pierre Alex Augustin, State of Sud-Est, and Nippes. The metro- the quake. The first report in the California; Don Ballantyne, MMI; Bill politan Port-au-Prince region, which April issue covered seismology Bruin, Halcrow; Rick Carter, State of includes the cities of Carrefour, and geotechnical aspects, primar- Oregon; Brucely Joseph, URS Corp; Petionville, Delmas, Tabarre, Cite ily. The EERI team responsible for Aimee Lavarnway, Shannon Wilson; Soleil, and Kenscoff. was hit ex- this report, including members from Nason McCullough, CH2M Hill; Mark tremely hard. In the city of Léo- partnering organizations — the Net- Pickett, University of Toledo; Dave gâne, located on the epicenter, work for Earthquake Engineering Plum, URS Corp; and Stu Werner, 80% of the buildings collapsed or Simulation, the Mid-America Earth- Seismic Systems & Engineering. were critically damaged. quake Center, Florida International This report is made possible by Over 1.5 million people (approxi- University, Sherbrooke University, support to EERI provided by the mately 15% of the national popula- University of Delaware’s Disaster National Science Foundation under tion) have been directly affected by Research Center and Western award #CMMI-0758529. the earthquake. The Haitian gov- Washington University’s Resilience ernment estimates over 220,000 Institute — visited Haiti from Feb- Introduction people lost their lives and more ruary 28 through March 7, 2010. than 300,000 were injured in the The 18-member multi-disciplinary On January 12, 2010, at approximate- earthquake. It is estimated that over team included engineers, social ly 5 p.m. local time, an Mw=7.0 earth- 105,000 homes were completely scientists, city planners, architects, quake struck approximately 17 km destroyed and more than 208,000 and geographers. The EERI team west of Port-au-Prince, Haiti, along damaged. Approximately 1,300 worked with the ASCE Technical the Enriquillo fault. The effects of the educational institutions and over 50 Council on Lifeline Earthquake earthquake were felt over a wide Engineering team and, together, the teams visited over 500 facili- ties and buildings in the heavily hit areas of Port-au-Prince, Léogâne, Petit Goâve, and Jacmel. The EERI team and its partners consisted of Reginald DesRoches, Georgia In- stitute of Technology (team leader); Susan Brink, University of Dela- ware; Peter Coats, Simpson Gum- pertz & Heger; Amr Elnashi, Mid- America Earthquake Center; Harley Etienne, Georgia Institute of Tech- nology; Rebekah Green, Western Washington University; Martin Hammer, architect, Berkeley, Cali- fornia; Charles Huyck, ImageCat; Ayhan Irfanoglu, Purdue University & NEEScomm; Sylvan Jolibois, Florida International University; Anna Lang, University of California, San Diego; Amanda Lewis, Mid- America Earthquake Center; Jean- Robert Michaud, Boeing; Scott Miles, Western Washington Univer- sity; Rob Olshansky, University of Figure 1. Georeferenced digital photos taken by the reconnaissance Illinois; and Patrick Paultre, Sher- team or donated to EERI are available in KML format at http://www. brooke University. virtualdisasterviewer.com/vdv/download_photo_kml.php?eventid=7. 1 EERI Special Earthquake Report — May 2010 medical centers and hospitals col- All data produced have been made Performance of Historic lapsed or were damaged; 13 out of publicly available directly through the Structures 15 key government buildings were World Bank and served in the Virtual severely damaged. Disaster Viewer (VDV), alongside Historic buildings dating from the thousands of geo-tagged photo- time of French colonization to the The Haitian government estimates graphs from the EERI reconnais- 1920s predate the concrete-framed that the damage caused by the sance team and various other post- concrete block construction that earthquake totals approximately disaster ground field teams (Figure 1). comprises most of the building in- $7.8 billion, which is more than ventory of Port-au-Prince. Historic 120% of Haiti’s 2009 gross domes- Many lessons have been learned buildings fall into three distinct cat- tic product. from the GEO-CAN effort, among egories: timber frame, unreinforced them that very high-resolution imag- masonry (URM), and reinforced Remote Sensing Data ery can be used to provide rapid concrete. damage estimates of severely dam- The Global Earth Observation aged structures where it is difficult to Timber Frame: In Port-au-Prince Catastrophe Assessment Network deploy in the field. This has enormous and other urban areas of Haiti, (GEO-CAN) response after the implications for future events where these buildings were generally Haiti earthquake realized a vision access is restricted or not feasible constructed between 1890 and many years in the making — that and immediate information is re- 1925. Built typically as residences, rapid and actionable damage as- quired. During reconnaissance, it be- the buildings were generally either sessment could be completed with came clear that more damage was 1) timber frame with exterior wood remotely sensed data enabled by visible in the imagery than could be siding, or 2) timber frame with ma- distributed interpretation in a geo- seen on the ground, because dam- sonry infill (known by the French spatial environment. Analysis is aged structures were behind walls, term colombage) (Figure 2). The done through a portal that serves deep within blocks. Mobilizing hun- masonry is either fired brick with as a “social networking tool” where, dreds of engineers requires signifi- lime mortar, or irregular shaped after reading a brief training docu- cant resources. Much of GEO-CAN’s limestone with earthen mortar and ment, hundreds of engineers and success is attributable to the generos- a lime plaster finish. In all observed scientists provided an assessment ity of Google, Microsoft, Digital Globe, cases, the timber frame included of damage by comparing before- and GeoEye and the San Diego State diagonal members and interior and-after satellite images of the University Visualization affected areas. GEO-CAN allowed Center, which not only for a comprehensive assessment of freely distributed data, regional damage and was used in but actively served imag- the development of the post-disas- ery for interpretation. ter needs assessment. It can serve as a successful model for utilizing Most importantly, GEO- remote sensing technologies after a CAN is a model for mobil- regional disaster. izing volunteers with pro- fessional expertise. The Within a week, close to 30,000 GEO-CAN community buildings had been identified as has conclusively demon- heavily damaged or collapsed. strated that professionals The data were checked indepen- will volunteer in large dently using field ground surveys numbers if the proper IT conducted by a wide range of or- infrastructure is available. ganizations. In total, there were over 600 GEO-CAN volunteers Social-networking can from 23 countries representing 53 be used to establish a private companies, 60 academic framework of massively institutions, and 18 government or distributed but collabora- nonprofit organizations. Almost 200 tive environments that members from EERI contributed can reduce the commu- significantly to the effort. For a com- nication gridlock common plete list of organizations, visit the in disasters. Future suc- GEO-CAN community tab at http:// cessful deployments will www.virtualdisasterviewer.com/ hinge upon harnessing Figure 2. Timber frame with colombage (photo: vdv/index.hp?selectedEventId=7. this framework. Martin Hammer). 2 EERI Special Earthquake Report — May 2010 Figure 3. Wood frame building next to collapsed concrete and masonry building (photo: Martin Hammer). wooden planks horizontally across masonry or concrete struc- the wall framing. ture (Figure 3). However, many sustained moderate These buildings were either one to serious damage due to Figure 4. Colombage performed well, though story or two, with mortared brick the deterioration of wood the unreinforced masonry wall collapsed (photo: or limestone foundations, wood- members from termites or Martin Hammer). framed floors, and corrugated steel rot. The colombage build- roofs framed with wood. The most ings sometimes expelled masonry prominent timber frame buildings panels under out-of-plane loading. ing Ministry of Finance (also URM) exhibit ornate carpentry details, Additions made of unreinforced suffered far less damage and did and are commonly referred to as masonry or reinforced concrete not collapse. “gingerbread,” but many simpler usually suffered the most damage buildings utilize the same methods The failures we observed generally (Figure 4). of construction. ranged from diagonal cracking in Unreinforced Masonry (URM): wall sections to absolute collapse; Both types of timber frame con- Unreinforced masonry construction modes of failure included 1) lack of struction are inherently resistant to predominates among buildings con- brick ties or brick headers between earthquakes. The all-wood build- structed between the late 1800s and brick withes, 2) lack of adequate ings are light and flexible, and the 1920s, often combined with the steel reinforcing, 3) weak stone utilize the diagonal members