What are causes of building collapse during an earthquake?

Answer 1

The passage of time is one reason. Buildings also collapse due to weak foundations. Earthquakes, tropical cyclones, and other natural disasters can also damage the structure of the building and cause it to collapse. Bombings or demolition of buildings are also other reasons.

Answer 2

Buildings tend to be designed to support vertical loads such as their own self weight and their contents. They are also designed to resist lateral loads such as wind loading but this tends to be much smaller than the vertical loading.

Earthquakes cause much higher lateral loads as they cause the building to sway more than would normally be expected. If the earthquake is large enough and the lateral loads exceed the design strength of the building it can fail as the lateral loads generate shear stresses in the structure which if they reach a large enough value can cause shear or buckling failure in structural members or joints leading to collapse.

Also earthquakes can cause a process known as liquefaction to occur which causes the soil to lose its ability to support vertical loads (a loss of bearing capacity). This can cause subsidence of buildings which can contribute to instability, especially if it is differential subsidence (where one side of the building subsides more than the other).

Answer 3

There are plates underground. The plates get stressed which is when the rocks are trying to get back into form with the other rocks. They shift around. Upward shift, sideways shift. If a building is in the way of that shift then the building will collapse.

Answer 4

Weak foundation, controlled explosives, earthquake, and a lot of other factors can contribute.

Answer 5

seismic waves because seismic waves star out in the epicenter and then they go up and some reach Earth's surface making the ground shake and buildings to collapse.

Answer 6

Earthquakes and tsunamis