Ibaraki, Japan's Bridges: Shin-Chinone Bridge across the Satogawa

June 2011 (36.574 Degrees, 140.540 Degrees) Shin-Chinone Bridge

Continuing upstream on the Satogawa is the Shin-Chinone Bridge an 83m three simple-span precast I girder bridge on hammerhead piers and seat-type abutments. The bridge was built in 1972. It had recently been retrofit with concrete column casings, concrete seat extenders, concrete shear keys, etc. Like the other bridges we visited, this structure had been sharply shaken during the earthquake and experienced a large approach settlement, a lot of superstructure movement, and many cracks and spalls. However, the retrofit appeared to do a good job of limiting the damage.

Ibaraki, Japan's Bridges: Shin-Chinone Bridge across the Satogawa by Mark Yashinsky is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.

Sichuan, China's Bridges: Ming River Bridges in Ying Xiu Village

July 2008 (31.065 Degrees, 103.4902 Degrees) Ming River Bridges

Drove into Yinchiou Village, which was destroyed by the earthquake.  After lunch we walked to the Ming Jing River, where several bridges, a river levee, a tunnel, as well as many buildings were damaged due to ground shaking, landslides, and a surface rupture.  A viaduct on the east side of the river collapsed due to a surface rupture.  A tunnel going into the mountains east of the river also was damaged by the offset.  A levee on the west side of the river and several buildings were destroyed by the fault which was estimated to have a vertical offset of about 1.5 meters.  About 500 meters north of the fault, the Ying Xiu Ming Jiang Bridge, a T-girder bridge on two-column bents that are supported on pile shafts had some damage due to a landslide at the east span and so the Sichuan Province Government has built a Bailey Bridge over the east span to carry vehicles over the damage.  A steel suspension bridge another 500 yards north of this bridge appears undamaged by the earthquake. 

Sichuan, China's Bridges: Ming River Bridges in Ying Xiu Village by Mark Yashinsky is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.