Issue 46

L. Giresini et alii, Frattura ed Integrità Strutturale, 46 (2018) 178-189; DOI: 10.3221/IGF-ESIS.46.17 179 and analysis of buildings in this village. Each student participated for four weeks in the areas struck by the earthquake, taking advantage of the opportunity of an open-air teaching laboratory. Indeed, this was an important educational occasion for students to observe real-life behavior of constructions under seismic actions, and how an erroneous structural conception can lead to relevant disasters. The students could face issues typical of existing masonry buildings and of particular historical structures, hypogean sites, called “Camere” (from which the town name derives). The teams classified over a hundred building block s, recognizing the building types that better performed over the shock and those that were affected by collapses. During the internship several inspections took place in some nearby small cities (Paganica, Onna, Barisciano, San Demetrio nei Vestini, Fossa etc., Fig. 2) and the historic center of L’Aquila. In addition, the students participated in surveys to observe interventions of retrofitting after earthquake, such as temporary houses, temporary schools, new buildings with seismic isolators. The students interacted with the inhabitants, the authorities and the technical offices, acquiring a socioeconomic knowledge of the site. They experienced the difficulties faced by the local authorities in the survey of seismic damages and in programming a reconstruction plan. It is worth noticing extremely positive results obtained with such an experience: the high number of surveys of buildings with different types of collapse , the close relationships with the inhabitants, the close connections with the colleagues represented a relevant human and professional experience for both the students and the tutors that led them. Figure 1: San Pio delle Camere village: the on-site teaching laboratory for students. Figure 2: A part of the student group selected for the internship during a survey. T HE DAMAGES OF THE 2009 A BRUZZO EARTHQUAKE uring the night of April 6th, 2009, a main shock rated 5.9 on the Richter scale (M6.3) occurred in the Abruzzo Italian Region. This shock caused devastation, with 286 deaths and 1173 injured. San Pio delle Camere, 25 km far away from the epicenter, was made of 2-3 storey masonry buildings, built according to the schemes B-C of Fig. D