BoatBanter.com - View Single Post - 5.9 Earthquake in Virginia & Lake Anna Nuke Plant?

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In article ,
says...

On 8/25/11 8:01 PM, JustWaitAFrekinMinute! wrote:
On Aug 25, 7:29 pm, wrote:
On Thu, 25 Aug 2011 15:12:27 -0700, wrote:
On Thu, 25 Aug 2011 13:58:06 -0600,
wrote:

On 24/08/2011 8:39 PM, Tim wrote:
Looks like the Washington monument got some pretty good cracks in it's
walls on this one....

http://www.forbes.com/feeds/ap/2011/...st-coast-quake...

I would not doubt the cracks were already there and the quake just shook
them loose.

But not sure I would want to be too close to it when she goes.

Some better picks and details.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/...ngton-monument...

Maybe if the right wing would be willing to maintain our
infrastructure, including funding national parks and monuments, this
wouldn't have happened.

The monument was restored in 1996 Clinton must have cut corners on the
restoration.

Looks like the quake was just to much for it looking at the places
where it cracked (pics we have available). I am not sure if any
different maintenance would change that. I would guess most of the
restoration was cosmetic, probably not really structural. The original
engineering just seems to have failed..

The Washington Monument is, for all intents and purposes, an
unreinforced masonry structure and has little ability to resist the
seismic forces of a strong earthquake. I supposed a first-class
engineering firm could seismic retrofit it, but the expense would be
enormous and there would be visible differences in the monument's
appearance. There are some cast iron supports inside the monument, but
they are not sufficient to hold the structure up in case of a big quake.

In California, which has a lot of unreinforced masonry buildings,
significant retrofitting has been mandated, but the purpose of the
retrofitting has not been to protect the buildings but, instead, their
occupants. This involves installation of a new steel skeleton inside the
buildings so that when a large quake hits, the outside of the building
may fall into the street, but the inside of the building will not
collapse. That's the theory.

I'd bet that an earthquake in the "7" range would have flattened the
monument.

Oh, boy..... snerk