The Earthquake Engineering Online Archive

Investigation of the failures of the Olive View stairtowers during the San Fernando earthquake and their implications on seismic design

Bertero, Vitelmo V.; Collins, Robert G.

UCB/EERC-73/26, Earthquake Engineering Research Center, University of California, Berkeley, 1973-12, 276 pages (710.1/B37/1973)

This report is an extensive study of the behavior of the four stairtowers of the main building at Olive View Medical Center during the 1971 San Fernando earthquake. Three of these towers collapsed; the fourth remained standing after the earthquake but was tilted 5 degrees. The main objectives of this study were to establish how and why the stairtowers failed and to determine what modifications in the design and/or construction would have prevented their failure. Dynamic analyses of different structural models of the towers under different ground motions were performed to assess the failure mechanisms of the towers as well as the efficiencies of the redesigns.

Available online: http://nisee.berkeley.edu/documents/EERC/EERC-73-26.pdf (34 MB)