Earthquake-Induced Structural and Nonstructural Damage in Hospitals

Abstract

The Sichuan (China) and L'Aquila (Italy) earthquakes have again highlighted the question of our preparedness for natural hazards. Within a few seconds, an earthquake can demolish many buildings, destroy infrastructure, and kill and injure thousands of people. In order to reduce the impact of earthquakes on human life and to prepare hospitals to cope with future disasters, this paper discusses earthquake-related damage to healthcare facilities. It investigates the damage to 34 healthcare facilities in seven countries caused by nine earthquakes between 1994 and 2004, in order to determine common and specific issues. The investigation shows that structural and architectural damage tended to be different and specific to the situation, while utility supplies and equipment damage were similar in most cases and some common trends emerged.

Healthcare emergency planning and management to major hazards in the UK

“…These will provide not only evidence/scientific support about the hazard and vulnerability, but also play a major role in identifying priorities, developing more robust emergency plans, while taking into account of the current financial climate through the use of modern techniques (e.g., IT systems), and increasing knowledge and awareness of professionals. The findings of this research complement previous research work which focused on studying the resilience of healthcare from different perspectives such as: resilience strategies (Achour et al, 2008(Achour et al, , 2009Achour and Price, 2010), structural and nonstructural behaviour (Achour et al, 2011), utility supplies and impact on hospital operation , and design and space planning .…”

Learning lessons from the 2011 Van Earthquake to enhance healthcare surge capacity in Turkey

“…In addition to these academic studies, experts recently revised the WHO Hospital Safety Index (WHO, 2015) which also provides a good combination of structural and non-structural safety and emergency and disaster management. Researchers also looked in detail at the different aspects of hospital resilience such as design perspective Pascale et al (2014), post-earthquake structural and nonstructural performance Achour et al (2011), and post-earthquake utilities performance , Myrtle et al, 2005. Others investigated the resources supporting the emergency response process such as estimating number of casualties (Trendafiloski et al, 2008, Turkan andÖzel, 2014), and mapping damage to identify potential injuries (Wegscheider et al, 2013).…”

“…In order for the healthcare service to save lives, it has to be physically and functionally resilient (WHO, 2007b). This denotes that resilience needs to go beyond strengthening the infrastructure (Achour et al, 2011) to include other aspects that are essential for maintaining the continuity of the service. These aspects could be finding ways to reduce the impact of other infrastructures' failures , empowering people to interact more with other emergency agencies (Achour et al, 2015), and developing strategies to improve response to major hazards (Achour and Price, 2010).…”

Seismic Fragility Assessment of Medical Components

“…Surveys carried out in the aftermath of recent major earthquakes world-wide [1][2][3], e.g. the 2008 Sichuan (China), the 2009 L'Aquila (Italy), the 2010-2011 Darfield-Christchurch (New Zealand), the 2011 Van (Turkey) and the 2012 Emilia-Romagna (Italy) earthquakes, have emphasized the poor performance of existing hospital buildings.…”