another bangkok earthquake, part 2

dr. pennung wrote back to an email i sent him alerting him to the earthquake that happened on the day of his lecture last friday. he sent me a paper that he recently presented at the 13th world conference on earthquake engineering in vancouver, canada.

i wish dr pennung the best of luck in his quest to spread awareness among engineers and construction companies here in bangkok. considering that earlier this year over 3000 buildings were declared unsafe, it looks like he has a tough battle ahead.

here's an excerpt:

even though bangkok is located at a remote distance from seismic sources, a recent seismic hazard study shows that bangkok is still at risk from damaging ground motions induced by distant large earthquakes. the risk is primarily caused by the ability of thick soft surficial deposits in bangkok to amplify earthquake ground motions about 3 to 4 times

...

under some special circumstances, earthquake disasters can occur at distances from the source (epicentral region) much greater than those usually assumed, say 150 to 200km at the most. a well-known example is the 1985 michoacan earthquake, where a large magnitude earthquake (m=8.1) on the [coast of] mexico caused considerable destruction and loss of life in mexico city located 350km from the epicentral location.

you can read the rest of his interesting paper here (1.5mb).