Documenting Liquefaction and Lateral Spreading Triggered by the 12 January 2010 Haiti Earthquake

Abstract

The 12 January 2010 Haiti earthquake (M_w 7.0) caused extensive damage to the Port-au-Prince region, including severe liquefaction failures along the Gulf of Gonâve coastline, along rivers north of Port-au-Prince draining into the Gulf, and a liquefaction-induced structural/bearing capacity failure of a three-story concrete hotel along the southern coast of the Gulf. During two reconnaissance missions, the authors documented ground conditions and performance at eight sites that liquefied and two sites that did not liquefy. Geotechnical characterization included surface mapping, dynamic cone penetration tests, hand auger borings, and laboratory index tests. The authors estimated median peak ground accelerations (PGAs) of approximately 0.17g to 0.48g at these sites using the Next Generation Attenuation (NGA) relations summarized by Power et. al. (2008). These case histories are documented here so that they can be used to augment databases of level-ground/near level-ground liquefaction, lateral spreading, liquefaction flow failure, and liquefaction-induced bearing capacity failure.