Civil and environmental professor conducts Chilean earthquake reconnaissance

Kyle Rollins, professor of civil and environmental engineering, recently returned from a post-earthquake reconnaissance visit to Chile which was subjected to a magnitude 8.8 earthquake.  Rollins was part of an eight person team funded by the National Science Foundation to document geotechnical aspects of the earthquake. 

Rollins is a member of GEER (Geo-engineering Extreme Events Reconnaissance) which typically sends a team to investigate after major earthquakes.  The goal of the GEER team is to “turn disaster into knowledge”.  Rollins was selected for the team because of his expertise with liquefaction and foundation performance.  In about one week, the team traveled over 700 miles across Chile to document damage to bridges, buildings, highways, ports and dams caused by poor soil performance. 

While many failures were observed, the engineers were encouraged that structures designed using modern codes fared much better than older structures.  The efforts of the Chilean engineers to improve seismic safety codes resulted in much fewer deaths than in other recent earthquakes despite the magnitude of the quake.