Following are Feroze Vazifdar’s first hand observations of the damage to the major terminals in Chile, supported by local consultants’ preliminary reports. San Antonio San Antonio has seven berths with six ship-to-shore gantry cranes.  Two of these cranes were damaged due to ship collisions.  Another crane was derailed, but has no significant structural damage, and was placed back on the gantry rails within a few days.  Some cranes had minor damage to the mechanical systems, including salt water damage to motors due to the tsunami. The pile-supported concrete wharves performed well, and did not experience damage.  Minor pavement damage occurred at the...
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Three new Evergreen container cranes arrived today at the Port of Oakland! Liftech performed a brief structural performance review of these cranes related to applicable crane seismic provisions.  We also reviewed the wharf structure for the crane loads during the transfer from the ship to the wharf. See the article from the San Francisco Chronicle for more information and images of the cranes arriving.
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I arrived at Santiago airport early in the morning to find that the airport had been shut down due to minor damage, baggage was stacked on the tarmac, and people were lined up to be processed by the Chilean immigration and customs service in tents set up outside the airport building.  Customs was well organized and foot traffic moved at a brisk pace.   The drive into San Antonio took almost two hours, with stop and go traffic over several damaged bridges.  Along the way we noticed a few damaged canopies, one major landslide, and damage to a newly built casino.      San...
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Look for Arun Bhimani’s newly added special presentation on the Earthquake in Chile at the TOC Asia Conference. Make sure to check out Arun’s other presentation as well. 
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Crane and Wharf Performance in the Earthquake in Chile Liftech is communicating with a local structural consultant and terminal operators regarding the damage assessment of the cranes and the wharves. Preliminary reports indicate that the container cranes that were designed to the modern seismic codes at the two container terminals in the Valparaiso region performed well, and some wharves sustained local damage.                  Crane Damage Two cranes were damaged at one of the terminals due to a ship collision during the earthquake.   Feroze Vazifdar, a senior engineer from Liftech, is in Chile providing assistance with the crane damage repair.                  Background The 8.8 magnitude earthquake in Chile...
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