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BHCitations sources and disseminates articles and papers that raise awareness of the lessons learned from previous failures and the forensic techniques used to investigate them.
February issue: Learning from disaster to prevent progressive collapse
The Alfred P. Murrah federal building in Oklahoma City, USA was destroyed by a terrorist bomb in April 1995, resulting in the deaths of 168 people. The actual blast accounted for only a small portion of the structural damage, with most of the damage being caused by progressive or disproportionate collapse following the loss of key columns.
This paper, by Dr Gene Corley of the CTLGroup in Illinois, assesses whether ‘virtually’ retrofitting the building to improve its earthquake resistance would also have improved its resistance to progressive collapse, and poses the broader question as to whether adopting earthquake requirements could be used to increase the progressive collapse resistance of structures in general.
This article was first published in Civil Engineering Special Issue on 'Learning from Failures’, Institution of Civil Engineers, Volume 161, November 2008 and is reproduced by kind permission of the Institution of Civil Engineers.