In late January, the American Society of Civil Engineers sent three teams to the tsunami disaster zone to conduct damage assessments. This is another field report from the India team, filed as they returned home.
The team traveled to the Indian Institute of Technologys Madras (Chennai) campus to meet with members of the Institutes Structural Engineering Division. Under the supervision of Dr. Meher Prasad, the division had conducted investigations of damaged areas along the eastern and southwestern coasts of India, as well as in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands that lie east of India in the Bay of Bengal. While their investigations focused primarily on structural damage rather than impacts to lifelines, the presentations were extremely helpful in guiding the ASCE team to sites on which we could focus our efforts.