Harbor Dept. Plans Study of Earthquake Dangers at the Port : Science: The symposium will deal with building a landfill on a fault line and other proposals.

In what experts say is a novel endeavor, officials at the Los Angeles Harbor Department are planning a scientific symposium to examine the effects of a major earthquake on the port, and specifically on a proposed 800-acre landfill that will be built directly over a fault line.

The symposium is intended to bring together the world’s best minds in earthquake engineering to draft state-of-the-art guidelines for future harbor construction--especially for the landfill, which will house oil tanks that might rupture during a significant temblor, possibly causing fires.

The scientific gathering must still be approved by the Los Angeles Board of Harbor Commissioners, which is scheduled to review it next week. At their meeting last week, commissioners delayed action on the proposal, saying they wanted to know more about it.

If the commissioners give the project the green light, between 60 and 75 academicians, engineers and consultants from as far away as Japan and Canada will be invited to participate in a three-day workshop at the port next March. The workshop results would then be made public during a symposium in July.

“We need the best minds that we can glom onto,” said Chief Harbor Engineer Vern Hall. “The basic approach is to focus in, not just to have some international symposium for the generic subject of earthquakes but to have a highly structured workshop where they will look at what we have today and what we are going to have in the future.”

Hall and others say the narrow focus of the symposium is what makes it unusual. Although scientific workshops are often held to discuss broad issues, they are not often convened to examine a specific project.

“It’s the first time to my knowledge that it’s been done,” said George Housner, a nationally known earthquake engineering expert. Housner was recently appointed by Gov. George Deukmejian to head an independent board investigating the collapse of the Nimitz Freeway and the Bay Bridge during the Oct. 17 earthquake in northern California.

Housner, who will co-chair the port’s symposium if commissioners approve it, said he believes it “sets a worthwhile precedent for other big projects.”

Engineers at the Port of Oakland also applauded the Los Angeles port’s effort. The Oakland port sustained $75 million in damage during the October quake, which caused a crane to be thrown off its rails. The damage resulted in part from severe liquefaction, which occurs when the shaking of an earthquake makes loosely compacted soil assume the characteristics of a liquid that cannot support structures.

“I think it’s a good thing,” said Jack Lambert, assistant chief engineer at the Oakland port. “It’s a way to bring the forefront of the engineering community to examine a particular problem . . . to provide the latest thinking on what should be done with that project.”

Ordinarily, the port would hire a consultant to establish design guidelines for a major project. But Richard Wittkop, the Harbor Department engineer who has been planning the symposium, said the intellectual give and take of experts in a scholarly setting will produce far better information than any one consulting firm.

“There is not one firm that exists that can do this sort of thing,” Wittkop said.

According to Wittkop, the symposium participants will receive extensive geological and geotechnical information about the port well in advance of the March workshop. They will then deliver scholarly papers on such topics as “Seismic Response of Retaining Structures,” “Empirical Methods of Ground Motion,” and “Modeling of Earth Structures.”

After their conclusions are made public in July, a subcommittee of scientists and port officials will draft the design guidelines, to be published next November.

Although Hall said the guidelines will affect development throughout the harbor, the port’s most pressing concern is whether the massive Pier 400 landfill project can be safely built.

The landfill is part of the port’s long-term plan for growth. The so-called “2020 Plan,” named for the year in which it will be completed, suggests that the port improve safety in its neighboring communities by moving hazardous oil terminals and liquid bulk handling facilities to the outer harbor, away from the populated areas of San Pedro and Wilmington.

To create the necessary land, the port plans to dredge the outer harbor and build Pier 400--right over a fault that runs underneath the Palos Verdes Peninsula.

Moreover, the landfill, like the rest of the Port of Los Angeles, will be no farther than six miles from the Newport-Inglewood fault, which delivered the devastating 1933 Long Beach quake.

In their 1988 planning scenario for a major earthquake on the Newport-Inglewood fault, state officials say liquefaction of landfill at the Port of Los Angeles will be a serious concern during a temblor.

“The severe ground shaking and probable liquefaction will affect many structures, roadways, bridges, cranes, docks, naval facilities, quay walls, utilities, etc. . . . “ the state report says. “Serious damage to underground oil lines and utility lines can also be expected.”

Hall and the port’s engineering staff, however, disagree with that assessment. Hall and Wittkop say that much of the landfill at the port has been built to withstand a quake, and that the port designs all of its structures to withstand a 7.3 earthquake on the Newport-Inglewood fault, which they believe could cause more damage than a larger temblor on the more remote San Andreas fault.

The two port engineers say they are confident that, using modern engineering standards, the Pier 400 landfill can be built so that it would not liquefy, even if a quake occurred on the Palos Verdes fault. But they are concerned about the seismic safety of the oil terminals and hazardous cargo facilities that will be built on top of the landfill.

Hall said the symposium participants will be expected to examine the effects of a Palos Verdes quake, which could cause the landfill to shift in different directions, possibly causing cracks in the land similar to those that appeared in the Santa Cruz mountains after the Bay Area quake.

And they will also be expected to study the effects of a temblor along the Newport-Inglewood fault, which would send a seismic shock wave toward the port, similar to the rippling effect that caused the collapse of the Nimitz Freeway.