Read more: Local, Buildings, Building Codes, Grand Strand, Myrtle Beach, Earthquakes, Haiti Earthquake, Chile Earthquake
The same structural features that make buildings resistant to hurricanes also help protect them from earthquakes.
Lately, we've seen buildings reduced to rubble from earthquakes in Haiti and Chile. With the Grand Strand in an earthquake zone, we wanted to know how well buildings here would hold up in a quake like one of those.
No one would ever say we're lucky to live in an area that's prone to hurricanes, but there is one good thing about that. The same structural features that make buildings resistant to hurricanes also help protect them from earthquakes.
Myrtle Beach Building Inspector Danny Badgett makes sure apartments under construction in Myrtle Beach are up to code for seismic resistance. "Anything that is a possibility of falling and harming the public is pretty much taken care of in the code." Badgett points to heavy anchor bolts that secure walls to the floor and metal straps that connect trusses to wall plates.
The idea is to tie the whole building together, from the roof to the foundation, says Bruce Boulineau of Myrtle Beach Construction Services. "So the building, when it racks, it kind of moves the whole building and it'll withstand the lateral motion a lot better."
Because the Grand Strand is in a hurricane zone, it's in Site Class "D", one of the strictest for building codes. That also makes local buildings earthquake resistant. But those stricter codes have only been around for about 20 years. Structures older than that would be more vulnerable, says structural engineer Saul Martinez. "Some of the more antique buildings and un-reinforced buildings that still exist commonly in our area would suffer more than the newer buildings. To what extent, it's hard to predict."
There's another problem for Grand Strand buildings, soil liquification. The looser, sandy soil means buildings could suffer a greater impact from an earthquake.
Still, the engineers say in general, most grand strand homes and buildings would hold up fairly well in a quake. "That shifting would make the house move, come off its foundation," says Boulineau, "But it still should be tight enough that the building will not collapse."
California, of course, is much more prone to earthquakes than our area. But our building code classification is the same as most of that state, though they do have stricter requirements for foundations.
Horry County is in an earthquake zone because there's a fault line near Charleston.
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