Ever see an entire Building roll?

[yuiyoshida]

Link to tweet

[spanone]

1. yikes!

[smirkymonkey]

2. Aren't they built that way? I know in SF that many of the buildings were built on rollers so

that when a quake hit they wouldn't be so rigid and collapse, rather they would move with the quake. I heard from some co-workers when I was out there that during the last big quake they were up on a really high floor and they actually thought the buildings were going to hit each other they were swaying so much at the top.

[yuiyoshida]

3. True for San Francisco, not so true for Mexico City

That was a brick building.

During the 1906 SF quake most of the buildings that came down were brick and the great fire caused by firemen using tnt to blow up buildings and make firewalls causing additional damage to the city and more fires.

[Wounded Bear]

8. Not sure you are totally correct...

Mexico City had a major quake a few years back. I've heard they've updated their building codes since then. Those look like newer buildings, they probably have shock absorbers.

[mountain grammy]

17. Yes, 1985, and these are newer buildings that didn't fall.

Terrifying all the same.

[NutmegYankee]

20. Looks like a steel frame with brick facade.

Certainly responded like one.

[ailsagirl]

16. That's what I had thought-- if they're rigid, they're more likely to break

Same with the GG Bridge

[fierywoman]

4. I was in my apartment on the sixth (out of 6) floor of an apartment

building in Mexico City during a 7+ earthquake, early 80's ... it was fine (it was one of those rocking earth quakes; this one seems to have been an up and down one, which is much scarier.) When it settled down, I heard water sloshing. I finally realized, IT WAS THE SOUND OF THE WATER IN THE TOILET BOWL SLOSHING!!! That's how much the building was moving. You actually get used to earthquakes in the "D.F."; the last one I was in we were all standing in our doorways to the communal hallway and a little (pre-school age) boy was crying. His mother asked, "Jorge, what's wrong?" I didn't hear what he said but the mother consoled him by saying, "Aaiii, Jorge, it's only an earthquake."
This earthquake looks bad. I got in touch with a very close friend from those days still living in Mexico City. She said they have been told to expect the big one in the next 48 hours, that it would be one going up the San Andreas fault.

[sarcasmo]

5. Wild footage, scary situation.

[mulsh]

6. 150 Spear St, SF, 10/17/89, top floor, rode it for a couple of minutes till it stopped moving

That quake was light weight compared to what happened in Mexico today.

150 Spear was one of the first high rises build on teflon pads that buffer buildings during earthquakes. That didn't make us any less scared. It is also built on fill which tends to liquify, as it did in the Marina District that day. It did make the building shake for longer than the earth quaked. I was on the 18th floor hoping I wouldn't end up on the ground too quickly.

[kentuck]

7. Skyscrapers should be prohibited in earthquake prone cities.

That is so scary.

[Wounded Bear]

9. Actually, I think high rises are safer...

due to the harmonic resonance of the building. The taller high rises have a lower harmonic, and don't tend to go into destructive waves.

[NutmegYankee]

18. They are actually safer.

The codes for building them require them to be able to sustain earthquakes.

It appeared the newer towers did very well. Hell, Japan got hit by a 9.0 and didn't lose any towers.

[MrsCoffee]

10. Yes, my apartment building in 1971.

Pasadena, California.

Only 3 stories though and that was terrifying enough.

[6000eliot]

11. Didn't have to see it. I felt it.

I'm in Puebla, Mexico. I was sitting on the bed watching a Youtube video, and there was a tremor that felt like the bed was rolling. Then, the whole building started rolling all over the place.

[octoberlib]

13. Glad you're safe! I've been in a tornado before and earthquakes scare me a lot more.

It seems like nowhere is really safe.

[ProudLib72]

12. Scary, yes, but it looks like the building was well constructed

Only a few bricks came loose. None of those big panes of glass shattered or dropped. Think what would have happened if one of those panes of glass had dropped when those people were running out of the building!

[hunter]

14. Rolling is much superior to collapsing.

Dropping glass and cladding is bad too.

During the Northridge Earthquake my sister-in-law's baby grand piano went on a rampage through their studio, smashing family heirlooms before collapsing dead in the corner against the bar, it's keyboard irreparably broken.

My brother now has a piano skeleton hanging on the wall. There's a little xylophone hammer hanging on a string so you can still play it. (Every day is Burning Man in our family. We don't need Burning Man.)

During the the Loma Prieta earthquake, and the Northridge earthquake, waiting for friends and family to check in seemed like forever. My wife has two siblings who were Bay Bridge commuters at the time. My brother-in-law was getting in his car in Oakland to go to San Francisco when the earthquake struck.

We were watching TV and it was terrifying.

[zentrum]

15. For the people there...

...those seconds were an eternity.

[BigmanPigman]

19. I have been through many earthquakes since moving to CA in 1984 and they

are all so different, even the same earthquake will be felt differently depending on your building, the ground it is built on etc. I was in my classroom, thank God the kids had already gone home, and it was a big BOOM! and that was it. Teachers in a different building at the same site felt it completely differently.
As a teacher I not only had to have earthquake drills but also drills in case a crazy gunman was outside of my classroom (which had a door that you could only lock from the OUTSIDE)!

[kimbutgar]

21. I worked in embarcadero one during an earthquake in the 80's and experienced this

Some people were getting sick and a few people fainted. I looked out the window and saw the Bank of America building swaying even more. I called my friend who worked in the building and she said they were evacuating because the sway was violent.

[localroger]

22. It looks scary but the rolling is what makes them safe

And more rolling generally means more safe. The Plaza Tower in New Orleans, the first skyscraper here, sways 4 to 8 feet in the wind. When it was built in the 1960's that was considered necessary for it to survive hurricanes. It bends instead of breaking. Newer designs don't have to flex quite that much but just like airplane wings, if they were perfectly rigid they would break at some critical weak point. The flexion spreads the stress out to all the components evenly so that nothing is taking all the load. Earthquakes aren't a new thing in Mexico City and they've had time to get their designs in order.