BeckerFraserPhotos July 2011 photograph 1048

Images, UC QuakeStudies

A photograph of fallen stock in the window of a shop on Lichfield Street.

BeckerFraserPhotos July 2011 photograph 1049

Images, UC QuakeStudies

A photograph of the interior of a shop on Lichfield Street. Fallen stock litters the floor.

Jim Baltaxe WEMO Photograph 125

Images, UC QuakeStudies

A photograph of the store room of Quinns on Papanui Road. The front walls of the building have crumbled, exposing the rooms inside. Decorations such as a mushroom and grass can be seen.

Jim Baltaxe WEMO Photograph 103

Images, UC QuakeStudies

A photograph of Munns the Man's Shop on Armagh Street. The windows have shattered and the glass has fallen onto the footpath. The stock and posters for an "end of lease" sale can still be seen inside the store.

Jim Baltaxe WEMO Photograph 124

Images, UC QuakeStudies

A photograph of the store room of Quinns on Papanui Road. The front walls of the building have crumbled, exposing the rooms inside. Shelves of shoes can be seen, many of them collapsed.

Performance of masonry buildings during the 2010/2011 Canterbury earthquak…

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.