276 
PACIFIC SCIENCE, VoL VI, October, 1952 
Fig. 5. Central portion of Honaunau School, from the southwest. All but the south end of this building was 
let down and moved westward owing to inadequate bracing of the underpinning in an east-west direction trans- 
verse to the longer dimension of the building. 
house was moved several inches on its foun- 
dation. 
A striking example of the effect of poorly 
designed underpinning is furnished by the 
Honaunau School. This was a long, narrow 
frame building placed with its length parallel 
to the contour of the ground surface. The 
front of the building was about 3 feet and 
the back about 10 feet above ground level. 
It was supported on timber posts. The posts 
and knee bracing parallel to the length of the 
building were entirely adequate, but there 
was comparatively little bracing parallel to 
the shorter direction of the building, and 
some of this was fastened not to joists but 
to floor boards. As a result, the underpinning 
was deficient in stiffness in the direction 
parallel to the ground slope. The direction 
of shaking during the earthquake was nearly 
parallel to this direction of weakness in the 
structure, and the swaying of the structure 
caused the underpinning to fail in part and 
to allow the building to slump downhill onto 
the ground (Eig. 5). The building is con- 
sidered a total loss. 
There were several church buildings with 
masonry walls in the area near the epicenter. 
Most of these suffered some damage, and 
some were very seriously damaged. The ma- 
sonry consists of fragments of lava rock laid 
with a mortar made by calcining coral lime- 
stone. In some there was very little mortar 
in the inside parts of the wall. Most of the 
buildings were more than 95 years old. 
The Central Kona Church at Kealakekua 
suffered cracking of the interior plaster on 
the east and west walls, but the masonry 
showed little or no cracking. At the back of 
the church is a small lean-to addition, the 
roof of which is supported by beams with 
