Posted by: magdadela April 30, 2015
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Dude,
This is my thoughts, so take it with a grain of salt. Of course it makes sense to seek expert opinions.
Keep in mind 9 Richter scale is just 1.1 level above 7.9R. From the pictures I see cracks only. And the level of earthquake movement at one location in a given radius of say 20 km will be different from another location within that radius, depending upon the distances from the epicenter (and the scientist gives you an instrument's reading or two). I'm not a scientist on earthquake, but my theory is some locations in fact might amplify the movement because the texture and nature of the ground at that location is different from another location. The foundations, elevations etc will matter. Also, as we have seen, if the ground develops cracks, then even the houses might be built for 15 R scale, but the houses will disappear into the, well, "black holes". And there might be margins of errors on predictions.
To make my point, take a few bottles and put them on top of each other, making sure they stand upright. Once all the bottles are upright on their own and stable, push the top bottle off the tower. The bottle will probably be damaged. Now if you use only one bottle on a plane surface, and knock it over with about the same force, very likely the bottle will suffer less damage than the first one.
The first one smashed onto the floor with force far greater than the second one, although the amount of force you used is probably the same in both cases. This is because of transfer of extra potential energy of the top bottle to kinetic energy on top of the energy it got from your push.
In some cases, houses might withstand more than what it was designated to (I'm not sure about such cases but I'd love such engineers), but the reasons will follow similar thinking.
In your case, I'd be happy if there were no casualties.
This is my thoughts, so take it with a grain of salt. Of course it makes sense to seek expert opinions.
Keep in mind 9 Richter scale is just 1.1 level above 7.9R. From the pictures I see cracks only. And the level of earthquake movement at one location in a given radius of say 20 km will be different from another location within that radius, depending upon the distances from the epicenter (and the scientist gives you an instrument's reading or two). I'm not a scientist on earthquake, but my theory is some locations in fact might amplify the movement because the texture and nature of the ground at that location is different from another location. The foundations, elevations etc will matter. Also, as we have seen, if the ground develops cracks, then even the houses might be built for 15 R scale, but the houses will disappear into the, well, "black holes". And there might be margins of errors on predictions.
To make my point, take a few bottles and put them on top of each other, making sure they stand upright. Once all the bottles are upright on their own and stable, push the top bottle off the tower. The bottle will probably be damaged. Now if you use only one bottle on a plane surface, and knock it over with about the same force, very likely the bottle will suffer less damage than the first one.
The first one smashed onto the floor with force far greater than the second one, although the amount of force you used is probably the same in both cases. This is because of transfer of extra potential energy of the top bottle to kinetic energy on top of the energy it got from your push.
In some cases, houses might withstand more than what it was designated to (I'm not sure about such cases but I'd love such engineers), but the reasons will follow similar thinking.
In your case, I'd be happy if there were no casualties.