following a vertical line of weakness are shown in the accompanying
drawing, fig. 22, of the Church of St. Augustin, at Manilla, shattered
by the earthquakes of 1880.
_The last House in a Row._—When an earthquake shock enters a line
of buildings, and proceeds in a direction coincident with that of
the buildings, we should expect that the last of these houses, being
unsupported on one side, would be in the position of the last person in
Tyndall’s row of boys. From this it would seem that the end house in a
row would show the greatest tendency to fly away from its neighbours.
If the last house stood upon the edge of a deep canal or a cliff,
there would be a layer of ground, equal in thickness to the depth of
the canal or to the height of the cliff, as the case may be, which
would also be in a position to be thrown forward. The effect which is
sometimes produced upon an end building is shown in fig. 23, which is
taken from the photograph of a house shattered in 1868 at San Francisco.
[Illustration: FIG. 22.—Church of St. Augustin, Manilla.
Earthquakes of July 18–20, 1880.]
_The Swing of Buildings._—The distance through which buildings are
moved at the time of an earthquake depends partly on their construction
and partly on the extent, nature, and duration of the movement
communicated to them at their foundations. By violent shocks buildings
may be completely overthrown. In the case of small earthquakes, the
upper portion of a house may frequently move through a much greater
distance than the ground at its foundation. For instance, during the
Yokohama earthquake of February, 1880, when the maximum amplitude of
the earth’s motion was probably under ¾ of an inch, from the slow swing
of long Japanese pictures, from three to six feet in length, which
oscillated backwards and forwards on the wall, it is very probable
that the extent through which the upper portion of houses moved was
very considerable. In some instances these pictures seem to have swung
as much as two feet, and from the manner in which they swung they
evidently synchronised with the natural swing of the house.
[Illustration: FIG. 23.—Webber House, San Francisco. Oct. 21, 1868.]
From this it would seem that such a house must have rocked from side to
side one foot out of its normal perpendicular position. That the motion
was great is testified by nearly all who tried to stand at the time of
the shock, it having been impossible to walk steadily across the floor
of a room in an upper story. The houses here referred to are either
those which are purely Japanese, or else those which are framed of wood
and built on European models, a class of building which is very common
in Tokio and Yokohama.
Perry and Ayrton calculated the period of a complete natural vibration
of different structures. For a square house whose outer and inner
sections were respectively 30 and 26 feet, and whose height was 30
feet, the period calculated would be about ·06 second.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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