Abstract
Strong earthquakes in the proximity of densely inhabited urban areas pose one ofthe most complicated disaster management situations faced by societies today. Herethe experience and principal disaster management lessons learned from the earthquakenear Athens, Greece, in September 1999, are presented. A review of the earthquakeaffected region reveals that Athens continues to expand in area, thus becoming moreexposed to seismic activity from neighbouring seismogenic areas. The earthquake of7 September 1999 became Greece's costliest natural disaster, despite its moderatemagnitude, and occurred in an area of low seismic activity, only 18 kilometres fromthe city centre. What were the effects of the earthquake on the building stock of Athens in statistical terms? How can a society with relatively modest financial means react when close to 100,000 properties are suddenly rendered uninhabitable or need costly repairs? What were the relief actions taken by a government that is experienced in dealing with frequent earthquake disasters in other parts of the country? What needs to be done to improve earthquake safety and preparedness?Has the recovery process two years after the earthquake reached a satisfactory level? What were the effects on the insurance industry? These are some of the issues discussed in this paper, which forms an initial study of the disaster management aspects of this event. The official information sources in this paper are from various Greek sources. It was thought useful to include some of these (e.g., theresults of the damage surveys; the government's estimates of the cost of the recovery; the measures for relief assistance; the data about the recovery process) for the benefit of international and local readers interested in earthquake disaster management issues.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Coburn, A. W. C. and Spence, R. J. S.: 1992, Earthquake Protection, John Wiley and Sons, Chichester, 355 pp.
Coburn, A. W. C., Spence, R. J. S., and Pomonis, A.: 1992, Factors determining human casualty levels in earthquakes: mortality prediction in building collapse, Proceedings of the 10th World Conference on Earthquake Engineering, Madrid, Spain, 5989–5994.
Comerio, M. C.: 1998, When Disaster Hits Home: New Policy for Urban Housing Recovery, University of California Press, Berkeley, 1998, 300 pp.
EEFIT: 1997, The Hyogo-Ken Nanbu (Kobe) Earthquake of January 17 1995, Report of the Earthquake Field Investigation Team, Institution of Structural Engineers, London.
EERI: 1982, The Central Greece Earthquakes of February-March 1981, Earthquake Engineering Research Institute Reconnaissance Report.
EKKE-EFA: 2000, Social and Economic Atlas of Greece, Vol. 1, The Cities (in Greek). National Centre for Social Research (EKKE) and the French School of Athens (EFA), 109 pp.
ESYE: 2000, Summary Tables of Damage by Municipality for Households and Businesses by the National Statistical Service of Greece.
Fardis, M. N.: 1995, State-of-the-art lecture: lessons learnt in past earthquakes, In: Proceedings of the 10th European Conference of Earthquake Engineering, pp. 779–788.
Fardis, M. N., Karantoni, F. V., and Kosmopoulos, A.: 1999, Statistical Analysis of the Damages in the Aeghion Earthquake of 15 June 1995. Report to the Organisation of Earthquake Planning and Protection. Patras University, Department of Civil Engineering. In 2 volumes with Appendix of Maps and Data.
Ioakeimidis, G.: 1984, Statistical data of damaged buildings and cost of damages from the earthquake of 24.II.1981, In: Proceedings of the Conference “Earthquakes and Construction”, Athens 20–24, February, 1984 (in Greek), 388-397.
Kappos, A. J., Stylianidis, K. C., and Pitilakis, K.: 1998, Development of seismic risk scenarios based on a hybrid method of vulnerability assessment, Natural Hazards 17(2), 177–192.
OASP: 1999, Implementation Guidelines of the Immediate First Level Post-earthquake Assessment of the Usability of Damaged Buildings (in Greek). Booklet published by the Earthquake Protection and Planning Organisation, Athens.
Papadopoulos, G. A. and Arvanitides, A.: 1996, Earthquake Risk Assessment in Greece, In: V. Schenk (ed.), Earthquake Hazard and Risk, Kluwer Academic Publishers, pp. 221–229.
Penelis, G. G.: 2001, Pre-earthquake assessment of public building in Greece, In: Proceedings of the International Workshop on Seismic Assessment and Rehabilitation of Structures, Athens and Istanbul, January 2001. Technical Chamber of Greece and Turkish Society of Civil Engineers.
Pomonis, A.: 1987, A Study on Earthquake Environment and Seismic Risk Assessment in Greece. Master Thesis, Hokkaido University Sapporo, Japan, 146 pp.
Pomonis, A.: 1995, Application of earthquake protection measures in the construction of reinforced concrete housing: a pilot study in Greece, In: Structures to Withstand Disaster, a publication of the Institution of Civil Engineers of Great Britain, 185 pp. Published by Thomas Telford, ISBN 0 7277 2067 8.
Pomonis, A. and Williams, M. S.: 1998, Lessons learnt from the EEFIT missions to the Northridge and Kobe earthquakes. Proceedings of the 11th European Conference on Earthquake Engineering, A. A. Balmema, Rotterdam.
Pomonis A., Windeler, D., Jha, A., Rodriguez, A., Papoulia, J., Bendimerad, F., and Nanopoulos, N.: 2001, Modeling Earthquake Risk in Greece, Proceedings of the 2nd National Conference on Earthquake Engineering in Greece, Thessaloniki, November 2001.
Spence, R. J. S., Pomonis, A., Dowrick, D. J. D., and Cousins, J. A.: 1998, Estimating human casualties in earthquakes: the case of Wellington, Proceedings of the SECED Conference on Seismic Design Practice Into the Next Century, Oxford University, 25–28 March 1998.
TEE: 1999a, Weekly Information Bulletin of the Technical Chamber of Greece, No. 2074, 8 November 1999.
TEE: 1999b, Weekly Information Bulletin of the Technical Chamber of Greece, No. 2073, 1 November 1999.
Tzitziras, A., Rozos, D., Vacondios, I., Elias P., Kynigalaki, M, Nikolaou, N., Angelidis, Ch., Poyiadji, E., Apostolidis, E., Bellas, M., and Konstantopoulou, G.: 2000, Macroseismic observations from the earthquake of 7/9/1999 in Attiki area and engineering-geological assessment, Annales Geologiques des Pays Helleniques, 1e Series, T. XXXVIII, Fasc. B, 2000, 145–153.
Tilford, N. R., Chandra, U., Amick, D. C., Moran, R., and Snider, F.: 1985, Attenuation of intensities and effect of local site conditions on observed intensities during the Corinth, Greece, earthquakes of 24 and 25 February and 4 March 1981, Bull.Seism.Soc.Am. 75(4), 923–937.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Pomonis, A. The Mount Parnitha (Athens) Earthquake of September 7, 1999: A Disaster Management Perspective. Natural Hazards 27, 171–199 (2002). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1019989512220
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1019989512220