Photograph captioned by BeckerFraserPhotos, "Felled trees at the Heathcote Valley School".
Photograph captioned by BeckerFraserPhotos, "Portaloos at the Heathcote Valley School".
Photograph captioned by BeckerFraserPhotos, "Sign warning people who help themselves from the Heathcote Valley School".
Photograph captioned by BeckerFraserPhotos, "Portaloos and temporary water tank at the Heathcote Valley School".
Photograph captioned by BeckerFraserPhotos, "Temporary water tank at the Heathcote Valley School".
Heathcote Valley school strong motion station (HVSC) consistently recorded ground motions with higher intensities than nearby stations during the 2010-2011 Canterbury earthquakes. For example, as shown in Figure 1, for the 22 February 2011 Christchurch earthquake, peak ground acceleration at HVSC reached 1.4 g (horizontal) and 2 g (vertical), the largest ever recorded in New Zealand. Strong amplification of ground motions is expected at Heathcote Valley due to: 1) the high impedance contrast at the soil-rock interface, and 2) the interference of incident and surface waves within the valley. However, both conventional empirical ground motion prediction equations (GMPE) and the physics-based large scale ground motions simulations (with empirical site response) are ineffective in predicting such amplification due to their respective inherent limitations.