SKOPJE EARTHQUAKE – 40 YEARS OF

EUROPEAN EARTHQUAKE ENGINEERING

It is in the nature of each human being to keep memory of events and images leaving
a lasting impression on his mind. While writing my introductory notes for SE-40EEE,
there occurred to me two events that have never faded away from memory. These
events are associated with earthquakes and human fate.

I could not believe that the bad news that I heard then, when I was 12 years old, is
true. I had to accept the terrible fact that two of my friends aged also 12 are dead.
The house in which my friend lived was next to mine. It did not fail under the
earthquake, but he was found dead under the ruins of his grandmother's house in
which he spent that fateful night. The second friend of mine came back from vacation
the night before the earthquake and was killed in the house in which he lived.

It seems that Man cannot have an influence upon future events. However, if the
buildings in which my friends spent the night had not been leveled to the ground, the
future would have been different.

The objective of this Conference is to show that, nevertheless, Man can change the
course of some events. This Conference is meant to show that, 40 years after the
Skopje earthquake, there has been progress made in the science of earthquake
engineering and engineering seismology and that now we can build seismically safe
structures.

The enormous number of recorded strong earthquakes as well as the possibility to

define precisely the active faults and soil conditions along with the application of the
probability theory enable definition of a design seismic input with a great preciseness.

Present numerical methods, software, fast and low-cost personal computers enable
fast performance of mathematical seismic analyses even for systems with over
million degrees of freedom. What is even more important, the papers that have been
received for this Conference show that such sophisticated analyses
have ceased to be a privilege of rich countries only and are now also
performed by scientists from all countries at seismic risk. The fact that
engineers and scientists from 32 countries worldwide will participate
in this event speaks for itself about this.

However, protection of human lives and material goods has been improved not only
through sophisticated analyses but also greater reliability regarding the seismic input.
From the papers that will be presented at this Conference it can be seen that a great
progress has been made also in seismic hardware involving isolators and dampers
that are increasingly being implemented in non-conventional construction. These
papers also show that there have been produced new materials as is carbon fiber
that will be successfully and simply applied in seismic rehabilitation of existing
buildings in future.

It can be supposed that one of the conclusions drawn from this Conference will be
that further improvements could be made toward achieving a seismically safe
structure provided that all the phases starting from control to handing over the
structures, i.e., control over the quality of the project and the built in materials as well
as performance of all the details anticipated with the projects, are thoroughly
respected.

Prof. Dr. Mihail Garevski,

President of the Organizing Committee of SE – 40 EEE