Earthquake specialists restore museum to help protect lives and history in the earthquake zone

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Structural work to strengthen a museum in the historic city of Washington in York could become a model for protecting heritage buildings and life in other earthquake-prone areas.

Highlights: York Museum, a pilot project to protect heritage buildings from earthquakes, steel bars used to reinforce chimneys, and for the lucky timing credited with saving lives during recent major earthquakes

York is located in Whitbelt, Washington, in an active quake zone, just 50 kilometers from Meekering, which was flattened in 1968 by one of the largest earthquakes ever recorded in Australia.

Martin Weiner, a structural engineer for geosciences in Australia, said work on the residence museum included adjusting the struts in the building’s chimneys.

The museum was part of a convict’s warehouse built in the 1850s and once the home of the local judge.

“We know historically that it has been proven many times around the world that buildings of this type and heritage buildings with unreinforced masonry and wooden floors are completely vulnerable,” said Mr. Wiener.

He adds that while the area is not as prone to earthquakes as California, Japan or New Zealand, in Australian terms it is “quite up there.”

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“The chimney has been modified by placing a steel rod under the chimney, clamped at the top and bottom so that it gives the chimney some great building strength…so in the event of an earthquake, it doesn’t explode and falls through the roof,” he said.

“It can actually maintain those forces that an earthquake imposes on it.

“In the event of an earthquake, the building can sway and can bend and absorb the energy being put into the building from the earthquake without breaking so the building remains standing.

“There may be some local damage but the building is still standing and not collapsing, so we are keeping life in this situation.”

Luck in previous tremors

The engineer, who works for Geoscience Australia’s community safety division, credits “good timing” to the low number of injuries and deaths in several recent earthquakes in the country.

The 5-magnitude earthquake that rocked the town of Kalgoorlie in Washington’s Goldfields in 2010 sent construction work from heritage buildings into the streets below.

“If it had happened an hour or two later, the outcome would have been very different because the footpaths might have had people in there and obviously that would have had a bad outcome with all the construction falling off those barriers,” Wiener said.

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A Shire of York spokesperson said the Residence Museum was a “pilot project to study earthquake mitigation by Geoscience Australia and the University of Adelaide”.

Researchers have devised innovative ways to stabilize unsupported heritage buildings against earthquake damage risks [and] It is funded by a grant from the National Disaster Resilience Program.”

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