Include earthquake mitigation in building design

AS an earthquake engineering post graduate from New Zealand, a country with extensive earthquake risk, I understand the magnitude and mode of the tragic failure in the recent horrendous “pancake collapse” of many apartment buildings in Venezuela.

It is the devastating collapse of floor slabs from the top to the bottom, massively crushing the occupants in many apartment buildings in the Venezuelan earthquake!

The destruction of the buildings started with the collapse of their roof slab that were loaded with heavy water tanks and subjected to the maximum amplitude from the seismic forces.

The crashing impact from the roof slab led to the collapse of the floor slab below, and its crash triggered a domino wave of floor slab crashes and collapses that crushed the entire building from the top down to the bottom!

Subsequent evacuation and rescue of survivors crushed and trapped tightly within the stack of floor slabs will be virtually a hopeless endeavour. 

Such catastrophic collapses will likely occur in buildings that were not designed for earthquakes: structural failures of columns and the brittle failures of the beam and column junctions at each floor.

As the fundamental philosophy in designing earthquake-resistant buildings is to save lives, architects and engineers should enhance the plasticity of the building to prevent sudden collapse and provide the critical time for emergency evacuation.

Architects should be cognisant in designing buildings with safer configurations/shapes that will enhance their plasticity in areas with seismic risks.

Engineers should design and detail critical structural elements to attenuate the energy from the seismic forces, particularly in the columns and in the beam/column junctions to enable plastic yielding at the critical beam/column junctions to mitigate the risk of sudden catastrophic collapse of floor slabs.

As Malaysia lies close to the Great Sumatran Fault and is definitely not free from seismic risk, the body/bodies governing our engineering profession should proactively provide a basic code of practice for the design of earthquake-resistant buildings in high risk areas.

This should be incorporated explicitly in the Uniform Building By-Laws for the protection and safety of the occupants.

IR DAVID NG

Puchong, Selangor