Earthquakes and Masonry: What can be learned from Nepal?

On August 24th 2016 the earth had a busy day in terms of damage to architectural heritage. A quarter of the way around the globe but only 9 hours apart in real time, a shallow 6.2 earthquake struck near Norcia and Amatrice in Italy at 3:36 AM local time, and a 6.8 quake at 5:04 PM local time – now called the Chauk earthquake – struck the ancient site of Bagan in Myanmar, where instead of villages and towns one finds a vast open plane dotted with temples made of brick and stone. Bagan is an ancient city that from the 9th to 13th centuries was the capital of the kingdom of Pagan. During the kingdom’s height between the 11th and 13th centuries, over 10,000 Buddhist temples, pagodas and monasteries were constructed in the Bagan plains alone, of which the remains of over 2200 temples and pagodas still exist. Many of these were solid masonry stupas, and others have interior spaces. In Italy, a number of small historic hill towns were devastated and in Myanmar, a remarkably picturesque open plane known as the Bagan Archaeological Area and Monuments, already on the tentative list for a World Heritage site, was badly affected with partial collapses.