ABSTRACT
ABSTRACT: Fires following earthquakes are one major threat in seismic regions. This is testified by several historical great earthquakes, which were characterised by the development of large fires: San Francisco 1906 and 1989, Tokyo 1923, Kobe 1995 are representative examples. The obstruction of access roads caused by rubble and collapsed buildings in the streets, the possible difficulties in water supply soon after the earthquakes, as well as the concomitance of multiple fires are some possible factors contributing to such risk. Besides, depending on the extent of earthquakeinduced building damage, the fire resistance rating of the structure could be significantly reduced. To this concern, paper summarises the results of some preliminary numerical investigation, dealing with steel moment-resisting frames. Multiple levels of earthquake intensities, hence earthquakeinduced damage, are considered by scaling acceleration records to increasing values of the elastic pseudo-acceleration. Moreover, two building structural systems are considered, one characterized by perimeter moment-resisting frames only, the other characterized by moment connections in all the bays.
