Quake study tests a home's strength

[Chesslike]

[Wrightwood]

Thanks Bob - I'll see if I can remember to watch or capture it 

Here's a reminder on where the San Adreas lies in our area. (Blue line)

I15 looking up Lone Pine Canyon towards Wrightwood


Upper Lone Pine Canyon and Wrightwood

[Local]

[kew]

I knew my house in WW was close to the fault but after seeing the picture of the village, I'll have a lot fewer negative feelings about paying my earthquake insurance.

[Wrightwood]

Darn I missed it due to the Apple Fire!

Did anyone watch it?

I emailed the Team and asked about getting a download or DVD copy of their webcast.

[kew]

The video is available on their web site. It run a little under 2 hours. I was somewhat disappointed because they only shook the house about 6 or 7 seconds. In the real world a earthquake can easily last 30 seconds or more. They were impressed however, because, living in New York, most of them had never witness an earthquake.

It is best to watch it in theater mode.
 

[Wrightwood]

Ken,
Can you post a link where the file(s) are located ?

Thanks

[kew]

http://nees.buffalo.edu/projects/NEESWood/video.asp

It a "Real Video Player" file (window).

[badgoalie]

     The major shaker takes place right at 53 min. Ken is right, a little bit of a let down. But, you can bet the cost of home building will be just a tad bit higher once the Ca. engineers get their hands on these reports. The amount of hardware, expanded shear wall, lumber sizes, and the amount of steal in foundations has been steadily increasing every year. Sometimes I wonder if anything will actually help in a true 7.5 or higher quake. This test was a 6.7 replica, and it did only last about 8 seconds.
    There's my 2 cents, and it was only worth 1.
 

[Wrightwood]

I must not have been the only one that requested the video in a download version.

They have now updated their website to include the files.

http://nees.buffalo.edu/projects/NEESWood/video.asp

[kew]

I would also like to see their vibration wave form. If the waveform was strictly sinusoidal it would give a far different result than would be obtained by a random shock wave.

Shaking something in a sinusoidal (rhythmic) back and forth movement would give one result, where bouncing the same object against a wall would set up internal stress that would give an entirely different results. In an earthquake you may feel like you are being moved back and forth, but in reality there are thousands of shock forces (movements) present at the same time which puts incredible stress on a building and its contents.

[KWBoy]

I wanna see them do it again with ken's idea but for 60 seconds and see if it still stands 

[kk_gizmo]

I think they were expecting more to happen, like the house to collapse. My reaction was just "huh. yep, it's an earthquake. now back to our regularly scheduled program..."

[kew]

....a temblor as powerful as the 1994 Northridge earthquake that caused $40 billion in damage in Los Angeles.....

........plan to subject an entire house to a magnitude-6.7 earthquake Tuesday for a systematic assessment of how a typical wooden suburban home holds up to the rigors of life along the fault line.....

While virtually every home in Wrightwood has a fireplace, I didn't see any evidence of a fireplace in the test house.

My Son-in-Law is a Brick Mason, specializing in fireplaces. He got a lot of work as a result of the Northridge earthquake. He told me that the "stick" built houses held up pretty well but many had distortion (twisting) problems. Also most fireplaces and chimneys had major damage and many of the chimneys completely separated from the house. The Northridge earthquake occured in the Winter time and in this area I imaging many fireplaces were active when it happened. If we had been the epicenter of the quake I would assume that would been bad news.