Photograph captioned by Fairfax, "Christchurch Earthquake. Damage in Richmond. Locals explore extreme lateral spreads in River Road".
Photograph captioned by Fairfax, "Christchurch Earthquake. Damage in Richmond. Locals explore extreme lateral spreads in River Road".
Photograph captioned by Fairfax, "Christchurch Earthquake. Damage in Richmond. Locals explore extreme lateral spreads in River Road".
Photograph captioned by Fairfax, "Christchurch Earthquake. Damage in Richmond. Locals explore extreme lateral spreads in River Road".
Photograph captioned by Fairfax, "Christchurch Earthquake. Damage in Richmond. Locals explore extreme lateral spreads in River Road".
Photograph captioned by BeckerFraserPhotos, "Victoria Square is full of deep fissures. Lateral spread near the Avon".
A man inspects damage to his garden. Liquefaction and cracking can be seen on the path and lawn. The photographer comments, "Lateral spreading and liquefaction".
Damage to River Road in Richmond. The road surface is badly cracked and slumped, and liquefaction silt covers part of the road. The photographer comments, "Lateral spreading cracks in River Rd".
Large cracks in River Road, where the road has slumped towards the river. The photographer comments, "River Rd, near Swanns Rd. Lateral spreading damage in River Rd near Avonside GHS".
Damage to River Road in Richmond. The river bank has slumped towards the river, opening up a large crack along the side of the road. The photographer comments, "Lateral spreading in River Rd".
Misko Cubrinovski, Civil Engineer, photographed with liquefaction and lateral spreading on Oxford Terrace. Misko's area is geotechnical earthquake engineering and foundation engineering, and he will feature in a UC in the News pull out supplement inThe Press.
A photograph captioned by BeckerFraserPhotos, "The lateral spread is evident from the fissures in the garden of Bev Dickson's home of 45 years which has now been sold to CERA. The property is located at 25 Tasman Place in Horseshoe Lake".
The 22 February 2011, Mw6.2-6.3 Christchurch earthquake is the most costly earthquake to affect New Zealand, causing 181 fatalities and severely damaging thousands of residential and commercial buildings, and most of the city lifelines and infrastructure. This manuscript presents an overview of observed geotechnical aspects of this earthquake as well as some of the completed and on-going research investigations. A unique aspect, which is particularly emphasized, is the severity and spatial extent of liquefaction occurring in native soils. Overall, both the spatial extent and severity of liquefaction in the city was greater than in the preceding 4th September 2010 Darfield earthquake, including numerous areas that liquefied in both events. Liquefaction and lateral spreading, variable over both large and short spatial scales, affected commercial structures in the Central Business District (CBD) in a variety of ways including: total and differential settlements and tilting; punching settlements of structures with shallow foundations; differential movements of components of complex structures; and interaction of adjacent structures via common foundation soils. Liquefaction was most severe in residential areas located to the east of the CBD as a result of stronger ground shaking due to the proximity to the causative fault, a high water table approximately 1m from the surface, and soils with composition and states of high susceptibility and potential for liquefaction. Total and differential settlements, and lateral movements, due to liquefaction and lateral spreading is estimated to have severely compromised 15,000 residential structures, the majority of which otherwise sustained only minor to moderate damage directly due to inertial loading from ground shaking. Liquefaction also had a profound effect on lifelines and other infrastructure, particularly bridge structures, and underground services. Minor damage was also observed at flood stop banks to the north of the city, which were more severely impacted in the 4th September 2010 Darfield earthquake. Due to the large high-frequency ground motion in the Port hills numerous rock falls and landslides also occurred, resulting in several fatalities and rendering some residential areas uninhabitable.
Damage to River Road in Richmond. The road is badly cracked and slumped, and is closed off with a row of road cones tied with warning tape. The word "closed" has been spray painted on the road surface. The photographer comments, "These photos show our old house in River Rd and recovery work around Richmond and St Albans. River Rd was again subject to severe lateral spreading. The river is still grey with silt, the road is ripped and sunken, and power poles lean at random angles. The red car belonged to a postie, who had to come back with a tow truck to extricate the car from the hole that had opened underneath it. Looking along River Road to the north-east. Taken outside 79 Medway St".
The region in and around Christchurch, encompassing Christchurch city and the Selwyn and Waimakariri districts, contains more than 800 road, rail, and pedestrian bridges. Most of these bridges are reinforced concrete, symmetric, and have small to moderate spans (15–25 m). The 22 February 2011 moment magnitude (Mw) 6.2 Christchurch earthquake induced high levels of localized ground shaking (Bradley and Cubrinovski 2011, page 853 of this issue; Guidotti et al. 2011, page 767 of this issue; Smyrou et al. 2011, page 882 of this issue), with damage to bridges mainly confined to the central and eastern parts of Christchurch. Liquefaction was evident over much of this part of the city, with lateral spreading affecting bridges spanning both the Avon and Heathcote rivers.
This paper provides a photographic tour of the ground-surface rupture features of the Greendale Fault, formed during the 4th September 2010 Darfield Earthquake. The fault, previously unknown, produced at least 29.5 km of strike-slip surface deformation of right-lateral (dextral) sense. Deformation, spread over a zone between 30 and 300 m wide, consisted mostly of horizontal flexure with subsidiary discrete shears, the latter only prominent where overall displacement across the zone exceeded about 1.5 m. A remarkable feature of this event was its location in an intensively farmed landscape, where a multitude of straight markers, such as fences, roads and ditches, allowed precise measurements of offsets, and permitted well-defined limits to be placed on the length and widths of the surface rupture deformation.