Damages from the 20 September earthquakes near Klamath Falls, Oregon

Abstract

The Klamath Falls earthquakes of 8:28PM PDT (magnitude 5.9) and 10:45 PM PDT (magnitude 6.0) on September 20, 1993, were felt over an area of about 130,000 sq km in southwestern Oregon and northern California. Losses due to property damage are preliminary estimated to be about 7.5 million. A motorist died when the car he was driving was crushed by a boulder in an earthquake-induced rockfall, and an elderly woman died of a heart attack that was apparently triggered by one of the earthquakes. Most of the damage resulting from the earthquakes was reported from Klamath Falls, approximately 20 km from the source region of earthquakes. As has commonly been the case with earthquakes in other parts of the United States, the degree of damage was highly uneven in Klamath Falls. Most of the town escaped with little damage to buildings or building contents. Losses were concentrated in the downtown area, but even there most of the buildings were not damaged. The unevenness of damage in earthquakes results primarily from large differences in the seismic resistance of individual buildings and differences in the seismic response due to different soil conditions and geology beneath buildings.