Analysis of Current Situation about House Anti-Seismic Capacity of One Village in North China Earthquake Region

Abstract

Due to poor economic conditions, houses in most rural areas of China are built by farmers themselves. While it still remains to be explored whether those houses could prevent themselves and people living in them from earthquake damages because they lack normative design and construction. With a village in North China whose seismic fortification intensity is 8 as the study subject, the paper explores practical anti-seismic capacity of current traditional folk houses by conducting a research about 315 households houses in this village and analyzing the house conditions and relevant seismic data. After study, the author comes to a conclusion that the traditional dwellings are with serious safety loopholes and can not resist earthquakes in this area, for those houses are influenced by earthquakes all year round and have more or less been damaged in varying degrees. Last but not the least, the paper presents some suggestions on earthquake resistant measures that newly-built houses in rural areas should adopt based on current practical situation.