structural engineers news

Italy wobbles

It isn’t too much of a surprise that many medieval buildings fell over in this week’s earthquake in L’Aquila, 6.3 on the Reichter scale. What is surprising is the number of modern buildings that were also affected. The worst example as L’Aquila’s 15 year old hospital, which was declared structurally unstable – not good at the time it was most needed. Roman architect Paolo Rocchi says that it should have survived the earthquake if it as built to code – that it didn’t might be evidence of substandard materials having been used.

10.04.09 in heritage structural-engineers