Newcastle Earthquake Study

After the Newcastle earthquake in December 1989 CSIRO's National Building Technology Centre and the Department of Civil Engineering at the University of Newcastle were assigned the project of assessing the evidence of how buildings react under earthquake stress. This report is a full description of the study team's observations and recommendations. As such, it provides a much-needed analysis of how Newcastle's buildings reacted in the earthquake, why they sometimes failed, and the lessons to be learned from the tragedy.