The Earthquake Engineering Online Archive

Preliminary report on the principal geotechnical aspects of the October 17, 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake

Seed, Raymond B.; Dickenson, Stephen E.; Riemer, Michael F.; Bray, Jonathan D.; Sitar, Nicholas; Mitchell, James Kenneth; Idriss, I. M.; Kayen, Robert E.; Kropp, Alan L.; Harder, Leslie F.; Power, Maurice S.

UCB/EERC-90/05, Earthquake Engineering Research Center, University of California, Berkeley, 1990-04, 137 pages (330.326/1989L/P74)

This report, prepared in response to widespread interest in the California earthquake, contains preliminary information and observations regarding the principal geotechnical engineering aspects of the earthquake performed by teams from the Univ. of California at Berkeley, as well as by a number of cooperating organizations, researchers, and local professional engineers, immediately following the earthquake. Because field investigations and additional laboratory and analytical studies are still in progress, more definitive conclusions regarding the earthquake will be developed during the months ahead and reported in subsequent publications. The contents of the report follow: chapter 1--Introduction, chapter 2--Seismology, chapter 3--Soil liquefaction, chapter 4--Effects of local site conditions on strong motions and resulting damages, chapter 5--Slope stability problems, chapter 6--Performance of earth and rockfill dams, and chapter 7--Summary and conclusions.

Available online: http://nisee.berkeley.edu/documents/EERC/EERC-90-05.pdf (17 MB)