Engineers deployed to Chile to study earthquake's impacts

BERKELEY — Engineers from the University of California, Berkeley, are traveling to Chile to help coordinate U.S. reconnaissance efforts to document the effects of the massive 8.8 magnitude earthquake that struck the region on Feb. Jonathan Bray, UC Berkeley professor of civil and environmental engineering, and David Frost, professor of civil engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology, have organized a 16-member team from the Geo-engineering Extreme Events Reconnaissance (GEER) Association to study soil and geologic conditions in Chile. Bray is chair and Frost is co-chair of GEER. Concurrently, Jack Moehle, UC Berkeley professor of civil and environmental engineering, is leading the Earthquake Engineering Research Institute's (EERI) Learning from Earthquakes Reconnaissance Team, which will include more than 20 researchers and practitioners from around the country. GEER is funded through a National Science Foundation (NSF) Rapid Response Research (RAPID) grant, and EERI receives ongoing NSF support for its Learning from Earthquakes program. Both teams will collaborate with each other and with experts from other groups, including the U.S. Geological Survey, the American Society of Civil Engineers and the Tsunami Ocean Science Group. "It is critical that we collect field observations soon after such an extreme event because the data we are seeking are perishable," said Bray.