Information on San Simeon Earthquake
December 22, 2003
By 
PowerPoint
Presentation (PDF Format)
Effects of San Simeon Earthquake on Structures (Presented
to the Nevada Earthquake Safety Council)
Seismic Retrofit of Unreinforced Masonry Buildings
(Presentation at CSTI 3/1/04)
December 22, 2003, San Simeon Earthquake
Reports
in PDF Format
Preliminary Report on December 22, 2003 San Simeon
Earthquake
My
Photograph Collection with Description
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Location |
File Name |
Description |
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Down Town Paso Robles |
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Damaged area layout in downtown Paso Robles. Locations of major structures, and longitude/latitude coordinates are shown for selected locations. |
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Paso Robles City Hall and Library Parking Lot |
City Hall address |
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Sulphur fumes and water leaking out of the cracks in the parking lot of the city hall. This area is known to have underground sulphur springs. |
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City workers attempting to plug the 110-degree sulphur hot spring that shifted its cap and erupted during the earthquake. Sulphur fumes were noticeable in a wide area around the city hall. |
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Water from the sulphur springs was being pumped out and drained to the city’s storm drain system. |
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Paso Robles Inn Corner of 11th and Spring Streets |
Clock Tower Brick faced with frame inside Little damage noticeable in the tower portion of the structure. The Inn was part operational and part closed. Lot of non-structural damage. |
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Window glass breakage in the restaurant portion of the inn. |
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Debris from the tile roof fracture. |
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Cracks in the brick façade. |
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Acorn Building Corner of Park and 12th street |
Collapsed building view from the Park street. This historic building, more than a century old, collapsed during the earthquake. Two fatalities were reported at this building site. The two-story building has unreinforced masonry walls supporting timber floors with metal sheet roof. The clock tower on the Park St and 12th street corner of this building collapsed. It appears that the second story wall on the Park Street side collapsed out-of-plane and the roof slid to the Park street side leaving a big gap in what appears to be collapsed roof of the next building. This building appears to have unreinforced masonry shear walls in the north-south direction, with much smaller shear capacity in the east-west direction. It appears that the strong shaking was in the east-west direction. The wall on the west side of the building collapsed out-of-plane (due to much smaller resistance), along with the clock tower on the south-west corner, bringing the roof down. |
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A vehicle crushed by the falling debris from collapse of the Acorn Building. |
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Acorn Building housed the Pan Jewelers on the first floor on the corner of Park St and 12th Street. The roof of the structure next to Pan Jewelers appears to have collapsed. It is possible that this was demolished during the search-and-rescue mission after the earthquake. |
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The structure next to Acorn building appears to have survived without any major external damage. |
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The next three buildings also appear to be relatively un damaged. |
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Julia’s Gift and Café, the next building in the block, appears to have been seismically retrofitted and escaped with little damage. Nostructural damage in the form of things falling off the shelves or Santa topping off were the only noticeable signs of earthquake shaking. |
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Governor of California surveying the damage at the Acorn Building Site on December 23, 2003. |
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Press conference by the Governor of California immediately following his tour of the damaged area in vicinity of the Acorn Building. |
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Bistro Laurent Pine and 12th Streets |
This building appears to have been retrofitted. The scheme is to tie the floor diaphragm with the walls. The damage was in the form of few bricks from the decorative parapet peeling off. |
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Close-up view of the anchors used to tie the floor diaphragm with the walls at the Bistro Laurent Building. |
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Rustic Ranch Furniture Gallery Pine Street, Mid Block between 12th and 13th streets |
Unreinforced masonry building located in mid block appears to have suffered no major external damage. It appears that the surrounding buildings provided confinement and prevented damage. Furthermore, the strong shaking was most likely in the east-west direction, the direction in which this building had the two side walls providing significant shear strength; the front of the building is in the north-south direction. |
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Cingular Wireless Building Corner of Pine and 13th streets |
Cracks in masonry façade at the corner of the building. Similar to this building, much larger damage was observed in other corner buildings in this area. |
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Ali’s Persian Rug Building South-west corner of Park and 13th Street |
Peeling of brick façade near the top of the building. It appears that the brick façade was attached to the wall with cement mortar. No ties were noticeable. |
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North-west corner of Park and 13th Street |
Building right across the street did not suffer any noticeable damage. Even the clock-tower type structure, that collapsed in the Acorn Building, appeared to be in good shape. |
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Marlow Interior Corner of 12th and Park Streets |
Marlow Interior is a two story unreinforced brick building. Located on the corner of 12th and Park streets, the south and east elevations of the building have large window openings in the first story and some windows in the second story, the north and west elevation has few window openings in the second story and solid wall in the first story without openings. This configuration led to significant eccentricity between the center of mass and center of rigidity. The damage pattern noted for this building is consistent with that expected due to torsion. |
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Large cracks in the south-east corner of the building. This corner is farthest away from the center of rigidity of the building and likely experienced large drifts due to torsion of the building during the earthquake. |
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Significant diagonal shear cracks in the first story wall on the east side. This appears to be consistent with the expected large drifts in this wall of the first story because it is farthest from the center of rigidity. |
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Close-up view of the diagonal cracks in the unreinforced masonry wall in the first story. |
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Much smaller cracks in the second story wall on the east side. Drifts are expected to be much smaller in this wall of the second story because of much fewer openings compared to the first story. |
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No cracks were visible in the east and west walls of the building. The two story wall on the east elevation of the building is visible on the left side of this picture. |
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Carnegie Historic Library City Park |
Located in the middle of the city park, this building is on the National Register of Historic Places. |
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Cracks are visible in the brick façade at the corner of the building. |
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Atascadero City Hall, Atascadero |
Atascadero City Hall was built in 1918. Discussion with the city engineer indicated that the structure consists of reinforced concrete space frame with brick façade. Damage to this structure forced its closure with the city staff relocated to other buildings in the city. |
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The exterior damage primarily consisted of cracks and severe spalling of the brick façade on the rotunda dome. City chambers were not being used although a meeting was in progress in the adjacent room. |
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Rubble from the dome façade on the balcony at the roof level. |
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Falling bricks from the dome façade took out a sky-light and fell on the tables. No one was injured as the room was not being used at the time of the earthquake. |
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The building was being evacuated on December 23, 2003. The city staff was allowed to go in groups of two or three after signing up on the sign-up sheet outside the building for safety and accountability reasons. |
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Internal damage consists of severe cracks in the walls and plaster throughout the building. The damage was more severe in the first story. |
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Rotunda office where the city council meets experienced severe spalling of plaster from the roof and the ring beam. |
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A reinforced concrete space frame supports the rotunda roof. No damage was apparent to the space frame structure. |
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The steel support structure constructed as part of the seismic retrofit prevented the parapet from falling during the earthquake. |
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Closets in the kitchen outside the city council chambers at the rotunda level opened and spilled their contents during the earthquake. |
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Contents of the display cases the lobby were tossed around during the earthquake. Several glass display pieces fell to the ground and broke. |
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The building was tagged as unsafe to enter and all extra-curricular activities were canceled. |
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