The presentation will detail the preliminary reconnaissance findings of MCEER team members from UB’s Department of Civil, Structural and Environmental Engineering who visited the earthquake-stricken area. Ioannis Christovasilis, a graduate student, traveled to the region within a week of April 6, 2009. Later that month, Andrei Reinhorn, Professor, and Gian Paolo Cimellaro, Visiting Professor, joined a team from the Polytechnic University of Turin (Politecnico di Torino) that focused on infrastructure facilities, particularly electric power, water, hospitals and telecommunications.
The majority of the damage occurred in the medieval city of L'Aquila (capital city of the Abruzzo region) and its surrounding villages. For example, the 13th century Basilica di Santa Maria di Collemaggio collapsed from the transept to the back of the church. The third floor of Forte Spagnolo, the 16th century castle housing the National Museum of Abruzzo, collapsed, as did the cupola of the 18th-century Baroque church of St Augustine, damaging L'Aquila's state archives. The City Hall (Palazzo Margherita, XIII sec.) and its civic tower were damaged as well as the Palace of the National Library. The apse of the Basilica of Saint Bernardino of Siena, L'Aquila's largest Renaissance church, was seriously damaged, and its campanile collapsed. Almost the entire dome of the 18th century church of Anime Sante in Piazza Duomo fell down. Damage to new buildings in the area of Pettino and at the Hospital San Salvatore was also observed.
Thursday, June 11th, 2009
02:30 PM EDT
Archived Video will be availible soon
If you would like to ask questions regarding the topic being presented, you can send an e-mail to mceerwebcast@civil.eng.buffalo.edu during or after the presentation. If time allows, an attempt will be made to convey any questions received during the presentation to the presenter to answer live during discussions. Other questions will be collected and sent to the presenter, whose answers will subsequently be posted on this website.
Seminar sponsored by MCEER Networking and Education Programs, MCEER SLC and hosted by the Department of Civil, Structural and Environmental Engineering and the EERI Student Chapter at UB.
Please note that the above link will only be active a few hours before the event is scheduled to begin. An archived version of this webcast will post posted shortly after the seminar is completed. To view the webcast, please make sure you have the latest version of Windows Media Player installed on your computer, visit
http://microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/en/download/default.asp
to download the latest version. Contact Goran Josipovic via phone at (716) 645-5400x19 or by email at gj4@buffalo.edu if you have any problems that prevent you from watching this broadcast.