KU Engineering Professor Surveys Earthquake Damage in Turkey
When Rémy Lequesne worked his steel-toed boots over the pervasive rubble of apartment buildings, schools, hospitals and dozens of other structures damaged and destroyed by a massive earthquake in early February in Turkey, he faced the real-life devastation already known by so many: more than 50,000 dead, more than 1.5 million left homeless, more than $100 billion in damage.
But as the professor from the University of Kansas moved from town to town looking for reasons so many concrete buildings failed — beyond the obvious, immense power of the 7.8-magnitude quake — Lequesne collected clues from among the collapsed floors, twists of exposed steel and cracks that had split hardened combinations of rock, cement and water.
Now the answers he’s uncovered will be put to work revising building codes that could help reduce the damage inflicted by future movements of the Earth’s crust.