Chapter 12: Non-structural building components and contents

Mechanical equipment, windows, ceilings and cladding may typically represent 70% of a building’s value, and its contents can represent many times the value of the building. Failure of these ‘non-structural’ elements in earthquakes has given rise to both direct and indirect financial loss, the latter through the interruption of business caused by factory closures and uninhabitable offices, damage to bridges, airports and railways, loss of ports and harbours, and so on. Non-structural elements have also posed a risk to life, either directly due to injury and suffocation from the collapse of false ceilings, cladding elements and so on, or indirectly due to blocking of escape routes. Another source of hazard has arisen from the failure of fire-fighting equipment and of vessels containing flammable, noxious or radioactive materials.