A security fence stands behind fallen rubble and the charred remains of the McKenzie & Willis building on High Street. A portable toilet has been placed on the road next to a steel beam which is supporting the building.
A momentous day in Christchurch as a huge steel frame was installed as part of the stabilisation work for Christ Church Cathedral. Karyn speaks with project director Keith Paterson about the plans to return the famed rose window extensively damage in the 2011 earthquake.
Photograph captioned by BeckerFraserPhotos, "The west wall of the Christ Church Cathedral where the rose window fell during the 23 December 2011 earthquake. Steel bracing has been used to hold up the front of the church".
A photograph captioned by BeckerFraserPhotos, "The base of a pillar on the site of the PGC building on Cambridge Terrace".
A photograph of the ChristChurch Cathedral showing the damage to the west wall and steel bracing. In the foreground is the plinth where a statue of John Robert Godley stood prior to the February 2011 earthquake.
The Octagon Live Restaurant (formerly Trinity Church) on Worcester Street. Steel bracing has been placed on the tower to limit further damage from aftershocks. Sculptures of a cyclist, bungee jumper, rock climber and kayaker can be seen on the bracing posts.
The wall of the Carlton Hotel has crumbled, exposing the interior of the upstair rooms. Scaffolding and steel bracing has been put up on the side, and a pile of building rubble can be seen on the footpath.
The wall of the Carlton Hotel has crumbled, exposing the interior of the upstair rooms. Scaffolding and steel bracing has been put up on the side, and a pile of building rubble can be seen on the footpath.
Recently developed performance-based earthquake engineering framework, such as one provided by PEER (Deierlein et al. 2003), assist in the quantification in terms of performance such as casualty, monetary losses and downtime. This opens up the opportunity to identify cost-effective retrofit/rehabilitation strategies by comparing upfront costs associated with retrofit with the repair costs that can be expected over time. This loss assessment can be strengthened by learning from recent earthquakes, such as the 2010 Canterbury and 2016 Kaikoura earthquakes. In order to investigate which types of retrofit/rehabilitation strategies may be most cost-effective, a case study building was chosen for this research. The Pacific Tower, a 22-storey EBF apartment located within the Christchurch central business district (CBD), was damaged and repaired during the 2010 Canterbury earthquake series. As such, by taking hazard levels accordingly (i.e. to correspond to the Christchurch CBD), modelling and analysing the structure, and considering the vulnerability and repair costs of its different components, it is possible to predict the expected losses of the aforementioned building. Using this information, cost-effective retrofit/rehabilitation strategy can be determined. This research found that more often than not, it would be beneficial to improve the performance of valuable non-structural components, such as partitions. Although it is true that improving such elements will increase the initial costs, over time, the benefits gained from reduced losses should be expected to overcome the initial costs. Aftershocks do increase the predicted losses of a building even in lower intensities due to the fact that non-structural components can get damaged at such low intensities. By comparing losses computed with and without consideration of aftershocks for a range of historical earthquakes, it was found that the ratio between losses due to main shock with aftershocks to the losses due to the main shock only tended to increase with increasing main shock magnitude. This may be due to the fact that larger magnitude earthquakes tend to generate larger magnitude aftershocks and as those aftershocks happen within a region around the main shock, they are more likely to cause intense shaking and additional damage. In addition to this observation, it was observed that the most significant component of loss of the case study building was the non-structural partition walls.
A photograph of the entrance to Gap Filler's temporary outdoor cinema on the corner of Madras and St Asaph Streets. The entranceway is made of lights on a steel frame, and leads to a painted "red carpet".
A photograph of the earthquake damage to Kenton Chambers on Hereford Street. Large cracks have formed between the windows, the brick crumbling onto the footpath below. Steel fences have been placed around the building as a cordon.
The front entrance of the Durham Street Methodist Church. The door is blocked by a safety fence and large concrete blocks, which have been used to secure the steel bracing supporting the front wall of the building.
A photograph of a badly-damaged shop on Colombo Street. The front wall of the top storey of the building has crumbled into the street, exposing the inside of the building. Steel and wooden bracing is keeping the ceiling up.
Sculptures of a kayaker, cyclist and bungee jumper decorating the steel bracing that has been placed on the front of the Worcester Street face of the Octagon Live Restaurant (formerly Trinity Church). Two of the figures are wearing santa hats.
A view across London Street in Lyttelton to the Empire Hotel and the Lyttelton Bakery. The buildings have been cordoned off by a safety fence and the facade of the Empire Hotel has been braced with steel beams.
A front entrance of the badly-damaged Oxford Terrace Baptist Church. The roof of the building has crumbled onto the footpath below. Damaged brickwork is still visible above. Steel bracing has been placed against the wall to keep it upright.
Reinforcement steel protrudes from a bank which is supporting a walkway on Sumner Road. Excavators are lined up on the left-hand side of the road. A sign reading, 'Rebuilding for our future' hangs on the security fence.
Photograph captioned by BeckerFraserPhotos, "The west wall of the Christ Church Cathedral where the rose window fell during the 23 December 2011 earthquake. Steel bracing has been used to hold up the front of the church".
A photograph of a detail of the front of Christ Church Cathedral. The upper part of the front wall has crumbled leaving the inside space exposed. Steel bracing has been placed against the wall to limit further damage.
Photograph captioned by BeckerFraserPhotos, "The west wall of the Christ Church Cathedral where the rose window fell during the 23 December 2011 earthquake. Steel bracing has been used to hold up the front of the church".
Water has swept grit and splinters of wood onto the footpath outside the Durham Street Methodist Church. In the background of the photograph a piece of one of the church's roof beams with its steel brace can be seen.
The Arts Centre on Worcester Boulevard with damage to the gables. Wire fencing has been placed around the building as a cordon. In the distance, steel bracing has been placed against the front of the building to hold the walls together.
The Arts Centre on Worcester Boulevard with damage to the gables. Wire fencing has been placed around the building as a cordon. In the distance, steel bracing has been placed against the front of the building to hold the walls together.
Recent severe earthquakes, such as the 2010-2011 Christchurch earthquake series, have put emphasis on building resilience all over the world. To achieve such resilience, procedures for low damage seismic design have been developed to satisfy both life safety requirements and the need to minimize undesirable economic effects of required building repair or structural member replacement following a major earthquake. Seismic resisting systems following this concept are expected to withstand severe earthquakes without requiring major post-earthquake repairs, using isolating mechanisms or sacrificial systems that either do not need repair or are readily repairable or replaceable. These include the sliding hinge joint with asymmetric friction connections (SHJAFCs) in beam-to-column connections of the moment resisting steel frames (MRSFs) and symmetric friction connections (SFCs) in braces of the braced frames. A 9 m tall, configurable three-storey steel framed composite floor building incorporating frictionbased connections is to be tested using two linked bi-directional shake tables at the International joint research Laboratory of Earthquake Engineering (ILEE) facilities, Shanghai, China. The structural systems are configurable, allowing different moment and braced frame structural systems tested in two horizontal directions. The structure is designed and detailed to undergo, at worst, minor damage under a planned series of severe earthquakes.
A photograph of the earthquake damage to the Country Theme store on St Asaph Street. Sections of the façade crumbled. The bricks have been cleared from the footpath below. Steel fencing and road cones have been placed around the building as a cordon.
A photograph of the earthquake damage to the Country Theme store on St Asaph Street. Sections of the façade crumbled. The bricks have been cleared from the footpath below. Steel fencing and road cones have been placed around the building as a cordon.
A damaged concrete tilt-slab building. The slabs have separated and tilted, and are supported by steel bracing. The photographer comments, "This house in Christchurch was made by bolting 4 slabs of concrete together. A fantastic idea in a country prone to earthquakes".
Steel frames are being used to shore the unstable facade of the St John the Baptist Church at Latimer Square while the building is being repaired and strengthened following the magnitude 7.1 earthquake that struck Christchurch on Saturday 4 September 2010.
A red-stickered building on Canterbury Street in Lyttelton. The building's facade has been propped up with timber, steel and concrete block bracing, and one of its windows has been weather proofed with plywood. Wire fencing has been place around the building as a cordon.
The front of Christ Church Cathedral. The upper wall has crumbled leaving the inside space exposed. Steel bracing has been placed against the front wall to limit further damage. A walkway from Gloucester Street to the Square was opened up for a few days to allow the public a closer look at the cathedral.