Abstract—Earthquake, the destructive natural disaster had recently stormed East Malaysia. This study aims to identify the physical effects of the earthquake to the building that occurred in Sabah, Malaysia. A survey method had been conducted among 221 citizens in the affected area to meet the requirements of this research objective. The result shows that 68% responded that building cracks had formed on the wall, 48% cracked floor, 23% cracked columns, 10% damages on roof and 8% responded no damages at all while only 2% stated the total collapse of the houses’ structures. Researchers have also identified that the impact of the earthquake towards their house yards shows that 55% and 12% responded experienced cracks on ground and landslide respectively, 25% with flood occurrence and 1% are caught with fire. Finally, almost 90% of the respondents are ready to upgrade their house structures. Thus, this research will be continued by developing the retrofitting and strengthening methods for the low rise buildings.
Index Terms—physical damage, earthquake, residential house, questionnaire.
The authors are with Department of Civil and Structural Engineering, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, 43600 UKM Bangi, Bangi, Selangor, Malaysia (e-mail: azrykhoiry@ukm.edu.my, ainhamzah@ukm.edu.my, azrulaam@ukm.edu.my, saminah@ukm.edu.my, roszilah@ukm.edu.my).
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Cite: Muhamad Azry Khoiry, Noraini Hamzah, Siti Aminah Osman, Azrul A. Mutalib and Roszilah Hamid, "Physical Damages Effect on Residential Houses Caused by the Earthquake at Ranau, Sabah Malaysia," International Journal of Engineering and Technology vol. 10, no. 5, pp. 414-418, 2018.
