The Effects of the September 19, 2017 Earthquake on Multifamily Housing Units in Los Girasoles II, Coyoacán, Mexico City

Abstract

Los Girasoles II, a residential neighborhood in the southeast of Mexico City’s Coyoacán borough, is delimited to the south by Calzada del Hueso and the Tlalpan borough, to the north by Calle Rancho Vista Hermosa, to the west by Calzada Miramontes and to the east by Calle Rancho del Arco. Its housing stock primarily consists of 36 multifamily units that are between four and six stories high. In the 8.1 magnitude earthquake in 1985, none of these buildings was apparently damaged. Nevertheless, the 7.1 magnitude earthquake in 2017 caused significant damage to eight of these 36 buildings. The objective of this article is therefore to identify the architectonic/structural characteristics of the buildings that were declared to be at risk after the 2017 earthquake. The results thus obtained allow us to determine the zone’s vulnerabilities, extrapolating them to buildings with analogous typologies elsewhere in Mexico City that are built on soil with similar characteristics.The 1985 earthquake with magnitude Mw8.1 apparently did not affect any of the 36 buildings from the neighborhood, instead the 2017 earthquake with magnitude Mw7.1 affected significantly eight of the 36 buildings. Under the last fact, the aim of this research is to identify the architectural-structural characteristics of the eight buildings affected declared in risk before 2017 earthquake.

With the results presented in this article our aim is to determine the vulnerability characteristics of the zone and to extrapolate these results to buildings with analogous typology in Mexico City and buildings located in similar land surfaces.