On October 27th Liftech’s Yoshi Oritatsu and Halcrow’s Marc Percher gave a presentation at the ASCE Golden Gate Chapter Dinner meeting about their findings from their earthquake and tsunami reconnaissance trip to Japan. Representing the COPRI Ports and Harbor Structures team, Mr. Oritatsu and Mr. Percher discussed the damage observed at various port facilities, the impact on operations and recovery…
Category: Earthquakes
ASCE Great Tohoku Earthquake/Tsunami Damage Reconnaissance
Written by Yoshi Oritatsu: As a member of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) Post Disaster Assessment Team, I recently visited Japan to investigate the damage to waterfront structures from the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami. I was fortunate to join the Coasts, Oceans, Ports, and Rivers Institute (COPRI) team, comprised of six U.S. engineers with expertise in port facility…
Crane and Wharf Damage Assessment
Following are Feroze Vazifdar’s first hand observations of the damage to the major terminals in Chile, supported by local consultants’ preliminary reports. San Antonio San Antonio has seven berths with six ship-to-shore gantry cranes. Two of these cranes were damaged due to ship collisions. Another crane was derailed, but has no significant structural damage, and was placed back on the…
Feroze Vazifdar’s Firsthand Account of the Earthquake in Chile
The drive into San Antonio took almost two hours, with stop and go traffic over several damaged bridges. Along the way we noticed a few damaged canopies, one major landslide, and damage to a newly built casino. San Antonio is a very quaint town with only a few high-rise structures. A five-story building with a lower soft story suffered significant…
The Earthquake in Chile
Crane and Wharf Performance in the Earthquake in Chile Liftech is communicating with a local structural consultant and terminal operators regarding the damage assessment of the cranes and the wharves. Preliminary reports indicate that the container cranes that were designed to the modern seismic codes at the two container terminals in the Valparaiso region performed well, and some wharves sustained…
SSA Cranes Stranded at Manzanillo
The Port of Manzanillo, Mexico, felt the shock wave from the 7.8 magnitude earthquake centered at Colima 50 kilometers to the east. This caused a 75-mm misalignment of the adjacent OPI and SSA berths. The misalignment was at the expansion joint between the berths and distorted the crane rails so the two SSA cranes, which were parked on the OPI…