Potential Losses in a Repeat of the 1886 Charleston, South Carolina, Earthquake

Abstract

A comprehensive earthquake loss assessment for the state of South Carolina using HAZUS was performed considering four different earthquake scenarios: a moment magnitude ( M) 7.3 “1886 Charleston-like” earthquake, M 6.3 and M 5.3 events also from the Charleston seismic source, and an M 5.0 earthquake in Columbia. Primary objectives of this study were (1) to generate credible earthquake losses to provide a baseline for coordination, capability development, training, and strategic planning for the South Carolina Emergency Management Division, and (2) to raise public awareness of the significant earthquake risk in the state. Ground shaking, liquefaction, and earthquake-induced landsliding hazards were characterized using region-specific inputs on seismic source, path, and site effects, and ground motion numerical modeling. Default inventory data on buildings and facilities in HAZUS were either substantially enhanced or replaced. Losses were estimated using a high resolution 2- km×2- km grid rather than the census tract approach used in HAZUS. The results of the loss assessment indicate that a future repeat of the 1886 earthquake would be catastrophic, resulting in possibly 900 deaths, more than 44,000 injuries, and a total economic loss of $20 billion in South Carolina alone. Schools, hospitals, fire stations, ordinary buildings, and bridges will suffer significant damage due to the general lack of seismic design in the state. Lesser damage and losses will be sustained in the other earthquake scenarios although even the smallest event could result in significant losses.

Influence of inelastic seismic response modeling on regional loss estimation

“…This trend increases with decreasing κ and τ degradation factors (i.e., with increasingly degraded response). For the scenarios documented in the South Carolina study [2,3], approximately 97% of the dollar value of the buildings in the inventory are associated with structure types that have a degradation factor value between 0.2 or 0.3.…”

“…This paper presents an extrapolation (deemed the Modified Parameterized Fragility Method, or MPFM) of the original PFM methodology to consider alternative means of including degrading behavior in the structural response by adjusting the bilinear response and also employing additional hysteretic rules. The results of the inclusion of additional hysteretic rules are then projected from fragility assessment to estimation of socio-economic loss, and compared to results of a case study published in the literature for a regional assessment of South Carolina [2,3].…”

Probabilistic Analysis of Earthquake-Led Water Contamination: A Case of Sichuan, China

“…The mainstream research (SHOWALTEr and MEY-ERS 1994;SELIGSON et al 1996;PETERSEN et al 2004;WONG et al 2005;SENGUL et al 2010;WANG et al 2010;HILL et al 2011;ABDOLLAHZADEH et al 2014;GHEORGHIU 2014;KIRBY 2015) in the discipline of earthquake-initiated-hazardous materialreleases (EIHRs) is predominately focused on studying the post-disaster impacts to create risk evaluation schemes. STEINBERG et al (2004) examined the earthquake-caused industrial spill in order to evaluate mitigation mechanism to response to seismic disasters in Turkey.…”

Seismic Reliability Assessment of Aging Highway Bridge Networks with Field Instrumentation Data and Correlated Failures, II: Application

“…Wong et al 2005;Padgett et al 2010); however, they do not consider the effects of aging and network-level performance.…”