Development of a special macroseismic scale based on the data of churches damaged by the 1926 Leninakan earthquake

Abstract

To assess the intensity of strong historical earthquakes on the territory of Armenia, a special macroseismic scale was compiled based on statistical data on the damage to the buildings of Armenian churches by the devastating 1988 Spitak earthquake. It is important that the stored data covers a long period of time (about 2000 years) without big breaks. The absence of a macro-seismic scale made it impossible to accurately determine the severity of these earthquakes. Therefore, this information was interpreted differently by different seismologists, and the strength of earthquakes was largely underestimated. A new preliminary special scale was created based on the damage analysis of church buildings located in the 7-10 intensity zone of the 1988 Spitak earthquake. It was necessary to improve this scale with other, well-studied, similar studies of earthquakes. We chose the 1926 Leninakan earthquake having studied in detail the technical condition of the church buildings damaged by this earthquake, the injuries received local factors affecting the seismic intensity (soils, relief, groundwater level, etc.), types of church buildings and written sources about their damage, and summarizing them, we tried to improve a special macroseismic scale.