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Videos, UC QuakeStudies

A time-lapse video of New Regent Street, taken from The Press building, which accidentally captured the collapse of the Copthorne Hotel. A cloud of dust from the collapsing building can be seen in the top of the video. The hotel collapsed while it was being demolished.

Images, UC QuakeStudies

Detail of damage to the former Princess Cinema in New Brighton. Bricks have fallen from the wall, exposing the interior. The photographer comments, "This is the side view of the back of the old Princess Cinema in New Brighton after the earthquake in Christchurch, New Zealand on 22 February. The bricks seem to be just about to fall, but stayed in place after several big aftershocks. This building has now been knocked down as it was so dangerous".

Research papers, The University of Auckland Library

Unreinforced masonry (URM) buildings have repeatedly been shown to perform poorly in large magnitude earthquakes, with both New Zealand and Australia having a history of past earthquakes that have resulted in fatalities due to collapsed URM buildings. A comparison is presented here of the URM building stock and the seismic vulnerability of Christchurch and Adelaide in order to demonstrate the relevance to Australian cities of observations in Christchurch resulting from the 2010/2011 Canterbury earthquake swarm. It is shown that the materials, architecture and hence earthquake strength of URM buildings in both countries is comparable and that Adelaide and other cities of Australia have seismic vulnerability sufficient to cause major damage to their URM buildings should a design level earthquake occur. Such an earthquake is expected to cause major building damage, and fatalities should be expected.

Images, UC QuakeStudies

A photograph of the Durham Street Methodist Church which collapsed during the 22 February 2011 earthquake. All that is left is a small section of the front wall. A large pile of masonry sits in front. To the left, scaffolding indicates the height of the building before it collapsed.