HAVE EXPERIENCED THE 2001 GEIYO EARTHQUAKE

After the 1995 Hyogoken-Nanbu earthquake, the seismic capacity evaluation of public buildings becomes prevalent in Japan. Since school buildings are used as local evacuation centers after disastrous earthquakes, the verification of their seismic capacity is a pressing need. However, due to the lack of supportive funds, many school buildings still remain unchanged. The relationship between the structural damage and seismic capacity has been identified from various pervious studies. However, there is no reliable relationship yet mainly due to difficulty to grasp information on damaged and undamaged buildings. In this study, the seismic capacity evaluation for the most school buildings in the affected area of the March 24, 2001 Geiyo earthquake, Kure City, Hiroshima Prefectur, was conducted. We found that the seismic indices of school buildings in Kure City are generally low compared with the results obtained for other prefectures in Japan. Therefore in this area, larger structural damage is expected than that of other regions for a same magnitude event. In the 2001 Geiyo earthquake, many old buildings were damaged. Many school buildings suffered from minor to moderate damages since the level of input motion was one in which the structures start to exhibit inelastic responses. Larger levels of damages were observed for the buildings constructed before 1971, especially for those having low concrete strengths. A good correlation between the seismic index (IS) of structures and their damage grades is observed when the sites are classified by the predominant period