Characteristics of Disasters Induced by the Wenchuan 8.0 Earthquake and Its Lessons

On May 12, 2008, a great earthquake with a magnitude 8.0 occurred in the Wenchuan County, Sichuan Province, China. The main shock was widely felt by the people in 30 provinces of China, 6 of which were seriously affected, and 3 of them were seriously damaged. The strong shaking not only caused enormous buildings and houses collapsed or seriously damaged, but also triggered more than 12,000 landslides, collapses and mudflows, which dammed more than 30 quake lakes. According to the authority statistics, 87,403 people were killed and more than 374,000 people injured. The direct economic loss reaches 845 billion Chinese Yuan, which is about 124 billion USD. In this paper, the characteristics of damage of buildings, houses, infrastructures and lifeline were described, which including reinforced concrete buildings, brick-concrete buildings, the bottom reinforced concrete buildings, brick-wood houses and adobe-wood houses, highways and railways, bridges, dams, electricity supply, water supply, gas supply and communication system. The secondary disasters induced by the earthquake, such as landslides, rolling rocks, seismic settlement and liquefaction were investigated and introduced. The characteristics and distribution of both ground motion and faults ruptures caused by the earthquake were presented, and the housing reconstruction conditions in quake-hit area were brief introduced as well. At last, some lessons learnt from the great earthquake were summarized.