Preliminary Research on the Characteristics of the M_S8.0 Wenchuan Earthquake Hazard

The M_S8.0 Wenchuan earthquake on May 12, 2008 caused heavy casualties and economic loss. According to the field investigations, the characteristics can be described as follows: The meizoseismal region with an intensity of XI shows an obviously zonal distribution and suffered serious destruction from the earthquake, and the destruction perpendicular to the earthquake surface rupture decreased sharply. At the same time, the intensity X and IX regions perpendicular to the rupture are narrow and therefore their coverage area is small. The intensity on both sides of the rupture attenuates rapidly, but intensity VII and the VI regions are wide, the latter covering about 240,000 km~2. In intensity VI region, the damage area perpendicular to the rupture in the southern part is much larger than that of the northern part. Also, much new understanding about destruction types and destructive modes for all kinds of buildings, landforms and terrain is achieved in this paper.