Structural damage due to the April 22, 1991, Costa Rican earthquake

1992 ◽  
Vol 19 (4) ◽  
pp. 586-605 ◽  
Author(s):  
Denis Mitchell ◽  
René Tinawi

Examples of structural damage, investigated during a site visit following the April 22, 1991, Costa Rican earthquake, are presented. Some aspects of the seismic zoning and the seismicity of Costa Rica are discussed. Severe damage to schools, residential dwellings, a hospital, hotels, and roadways is reported. Damage and collapse of bridges due to severe ground movements, pile failures, failure of restrainers, loss of support, and embankment failures are illustrated. Damage to industrial facilities, including examples of failures of cylindrical storage tanks, due to severe sloshing and buckling is highlighted. Key words: seismic design, earthquake, Costa Rica, buildings, bridges, codes, industrial facilities, storage tanks.

2001 ◽  
Vol 28 (4) ◽  
pp. 715-737
Author(s):  
Murat Saatcioglu ◽  
Denis Mitchell ◽  
René Tinawi ◽  
N John Gardner ◽  
Anthony G Gillies ◽  
...  

The 1975 Turkish code provisions are first reviewed to provide the background for design and detailing of structures prior to the earthquake. The performance of reinforced concrete and masonry structures is described indicating many of the deficiencies in design, detailing, and construction execution. The behaviour of precast concrete structures, steel structures, and industrial facilities is also presented. The provisions of the 1997 Turkish building code are summarized and a description of new construction provides evidence of both excellent and poor construction practice. Some examples of retrofitting of damaged structures soon after the earthquake are also presented.Key words: seismic design, earthquake, Kocaeli, structures, codes, concrete, precast concrete.


Author(s):  
Jennifer M. Piscopo

Jennifer M. Piscopo examines how the crisis of representation in Costa Rica has placed a ceiling on gender equality in representation. The restructuring of the Costa Rican party system and party fragmentation has made electing multiple candidates from any one ballot more difficult. Top spots have become even more prestigious and more likely to be allocated to men, which reduces women’s electoral chances. Corruption scandals, party breakdown, citizen frustration, and economic problems tainted the administration of the nation’s first female president, Laura Chinchilla. Female legislators have often worked to promote women’s issues and feminist policies, but Chinchilla eschewed feminism, even though several of her policies did benefit women. Overall, her failed presidency may create difficulties for other women seeking top political offices and could have negative consequences for views of women in politics. These challenges notwithstanding, Piscopo concludes that Costa Rica remains at the vanguard of women’s political representation in Latin America.


2016 ◽  
Vol 32 (2) ◽  
pp. 1187-1207 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jaime García-Pérez ◽  
René Riaño

The Kohonen artificial neural network is employed to divide a region of known seismicity into zones. Optimum boundaries and seismic design coefficients for each zone are determined by computing the expected present value of the total cost, including the initial cost of structures and damages due to earthquakes. The region is discretized into cells containing information on seismicity and the number of structural types. Then regionalization is performed, first without considering jurisdictional limits and later including this restriction. Up to four different types of structures are considered simultaneously in the regionalization. The results are presented in maps showing both zones and corresponding seismic design coefficients.


2017 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 1
Author(s):  
Paulette Barberousse-Alfonso ◽  
Marie Claire Vargas-Dengo ◽  
Pamela Corrales-Bastos

From a critical and transformative approach, this essay presents inputs and relevant conclusions obtained during the first stage of the project Construyendo una propuesta de implementación del Programa Maestros Comunitarios (PMC), Code number 0166-15 DEB-UNA (UNA, DEB, s. f.), conducted in 2016. Considering our perspective as researchers and professors at División de Educación Básica, the paper addresses a current topic within the socio-educative field to face challenges of contemporary educational models in formal and non-formal areas of elementary education in the Costa Rican context. Our purpose is that students and teachers of the career program Pedagogía con énfasis en I y II ciclos de la Educación General Básica have an overview of the national, social, and educational reality in an attempt to involve them in applying pedagogical actions towards finding a solution to school dropouts at Escuela Finca Guararí, Heredia, Costa Rica. The essay describes the experience of teaching education students and their socio-educational action with the focus on the systematization of the experience in the initial stage of the project. Furthermore, the paper connects with emerging strategic knowledge areas at División de Educación Básica (DEB), such as social and community pedagogy in the context of the National University (UNA) of Costa Rica. It takes over a route already traced at DEB, which proposes more flexible and alternative pedagogic formats to promote educational equity and diversity issues. The paper describes the project background and a theoretical framework, as well as aspects that have been shared by the protagonist actors along the process: students-teachers, host teachers, supervisor professors, school children, and their parents at Escuela Finca Guararí. Conclusions address main results and facts during 2016 in order to show the viability of the project, which is conducted from a public university. Finally, the article also includes an overview of the project’s future in terms of its implementation in the Costa Rican context.


1996 ◽  
Vol 52 (4) ◽  
pp. 465-493 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marcia Olander

The years following World War Two produced a strong resurgence of U.S. intervention in Central America and the Caribbean couched in Cold War terms. Although the U.S. intervention in Guatemala to overthrow the government of Jacobo Arbenz in 1954 has generally been seen as the first case of Cold War covert anti-Communist intervention in Latin America, several scholars have raised questions about U.S. involvement in a 1948 Costa Rican civil war in which Communism played a critical role. In a 1993 article in The Americas, Kyle Longley argued that “the U.S. response to the Costa Rican Revolution of 1948, not the Guatemalan affair, marked the origins of the Cold War in Latin America.” The U.S. “actively interfered,” and achieved “comparable results in Costa Rica as in Guatemala: the removal of a perceived Communist threat.” Other authors have argued, even, that the U.S. had prepared an invasion force in the Panama Canal Zone to pacify the country. The fifty years of Cold War anti-Communism entitles one to be skeptical of U.S. non-intervention in a Central American conflict involving Communism. Costa Ricans, aware of a long tradition of U.S. intervention in the region, also assumed that the U.S. would intervene. Most, if not all, were expecting intervention and one key government figure described U.S. pressure as like “the air, which is felt, even if it cannot be seen.” Yet, historians must do more than just “feel” intervention. Subsequent Cold War intervention may make it difficult to appraise the 1948 events in Costa Rica objectively. Statements like Longley's that “it is hard to believe that in early 1948 … Washington would not favor policies that ensured the removal of the [Communist Party] Vanguard,” although logical, do not coincide with the facts of the U.S. role in the conflict.


1981 ◽  
Vol 107 (1) ◽  
pp. 191-207
Author(s):  
Medhat A. Haroun ◽  
George W. Housner

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Luis Rosero-Bixby

BACKGROUND The Costa Rican vaccination program uses Pfizer-BioNTech and Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccines. Real-world estimates of these vaccines effectiveness to prevent hospitalizations range from 90% to 98% for two doses and from 70% to 91% for a single dose. Almost all of these estimates predate the Delta variant. OBJECTIVE To estimate the dose-dependent effectiveness of coronavirus disease (COVID-19) vaccines to prevent severe illness in real-world conditions of Costa Rica, after the Delta variant became dominant. METHODS This observational study is a secondary analysis of hospitalizations prevalence. The participants are all 3.67 million adults residents in Costa Rica by mid-2021. The study is based on public aggregated data of 5978 COVID-19-related hospital records from 14th September to 20th October, 2021 and 6.1 million vaccination doses administered to determine hospitalization prevalence by dose-specific vaccination status. The intervention retrospectively evaluated is vaccination with Pfizer-BioNTech (78%) and Oxford-AstraZeneca (22%). The main outcome studied is being hospitalized. RESULTS Vaccine effectiveness to prevent hospitalization (VEH) was estimated as 93.4% (95% confidence interval [CI]: 93.0 to 93.9) for complete vaccination and 76.7% (CI: 75.0 to 78.3) for single-dose vaccination among adults of all ages. VEH was lower and more uncertain among older adults aged 58 years and above: 92% (CI: 91% to 93%) for those who had received full vaccination and 64% (CI: 58% to 69%) for those who had received partial vaccination. Single-dose VEH declined over time during the study period, especially in the older age group. Estimates were sensitive to possible errors in the population count used to determine the residual number of unvaccinated people when vaccine coverage is high. CONCLUSIONS The Costa Rican vaccination program that administered Pfizer and Oxford vaccines are highly effective to prevent COVID-19-related hospitalizations after the Delta variant had become dominant. Moreover, a single dose is reasonably effective, justifying the continuation of the national policy of postponing the application for the second dose of the Pfizer vaccine to accelerate the vaccination and increase the number of people being vaccinated. Timely monitoring of vaccine effectiveness is important to detect eventual failures and motivate the public based on information that the vaccinations are effective.


1977 ◽  
Vol 67 (5) ◽  
pp. 1441-1472
Author(s):  
R. Husid ◽  
A. F. Espinosa ◽  
J. de las Casas

abstract The October 3, 1974, earthquake caused severe damage to buildings of adobe and quincha construction, and also to masonry, reinforced masonry, and reinforced-concrete structures in Lima and vicinity. Most of the damage to well-built structures was due, in part, to the lack of lateral resistance in the original design and to the fact that this earthquake had more energy around 0.4 seconds period than prior destructive earthquakes. Water tanks on the roofs of structures with four or five stories were damaged. Well-engineered single-story buildings were less affected than taller structures. Considerable structural damage to reinforced-concrete structures occurred in the districts of Barranco, La Campiña Molina, and Callao. In La Campiña three-story building partly collapsed and other buildings sustained considerable damage. In La Molina, the buildings of the Agrarian University sustained severe damage, and some collapsed. In Surco, the district adjacent to La Molina, there was no appreciable damage. In Callao, a four-story building collapsed, and the upper half of a concrete silo collapsed. In reinforced-concrete structures, column ties were frequently small in diameter, widely spaced, and not well connected. Usually, the reinforcement of resisting elements had no relation to their stiffnesses. Front columns in school buildings were restrained by high brick walls and had rather short effective lengths to allow building displacement in that direction. The windows in the rear walls gave the rear columns a much greater effective length. Therefore, a longitudinal displacement induces large shear forces in the front columns where most of the severe damage occurred. This problem was not considered in the design of these structures.


1997 ◽  
Vol 28 (4) ◽  
pp. 471-492 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patricia Gentili ◽  
M. Alma Solis

AbstractOmiodes Guenée is redescribed based on all New World species, including the type species O. humeralis Guenée. Four new species from Costa Rica, O. janzeni sp. n., O. hallwachsae sp. n., O. sirena sp. n., O. ochracea sp. n., are described. Ten new synonymies are established : Phostria disciiridescens Hampson is =O. croeceiceps (Walker), Phostria cayennalis Schaus is =O. grandis (Druce), Omiodes ochrosoma Felder & Rogenhofer and Phryganodes gazalis Schaus are =O. pandaralis (Walker), Nacoleia lenticurvalis Hampson, Phryganodes anchoritalis Dyar, and Phostria duplicata Kaye are =O. confusalis (Dognin), O. cervinalis Amsel is =O. martvralis (Lederer), Nacoleia indicata ab. pigralis Dognin and Botis fortificalis Möschler are =O. metricalis (Möschler). One new combination is recognized: O. pandaralis (Walker) was transferred from Coelorhynchidia Hampson. A key and an updated checklist to the neotropical Omiodes species is provided, including O. indicata (Fabricius), a worldwide pest. Ten species that do not belong in Omiodes are retained until appropriate generic placements are identified.


2012 ◽  
Vol 28 (4) ◽  
pp. 1549-1568 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shun-Hao Ni ◽  
De-Yi Zhang ◽  
Wei-Chau Xie ◽  
Mahesh D. Pandey

Uniform hazard spectra (UHS) have been used as design earthquakes in several design codes. However, as the results from scalar probabilistic seismic hazard analysis (PSHA), UHS do not provide knowledge about the simultaneous occurrence of spectral accelerations at multiple vibration periods. The concept of a single “design earthquake” is then lost on a UHS. In this study, a vector-valued PSHA combined with scalar PSHA is applied to establish an alternative design spectrum, named vector-valued UHS (VUHS). Vector-valued seismic hazard deaggregation (SHD) is also performed to determine the design earthquake in terms of magnitude, distance, and occurrence rate for the VUHS. The proposed VUHS preserves the essence of the UHS and can also be interpreted as a single design earthquake. To simplify the procedure for generating the VUHS, so that they can be easily incorporated into performance-based seismic design, an approximate method is also developed.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document