During the past few decades, the number of large public warehouse
stores (often referred to as big-box stores) across the nation has
grown significantly, changing both consumer buying habits and the
public's risk of injury during earthquakes. During an earthquake,
occupant safety in a big-box store depends on both the structural
performance of the building and on the performance of the storage
racks and their contents. Earthquake ground motions can cause
storage racks to collapse or overturn if they are not properly
designed, installed, maintained, and loaded. In addition, goods
stored on the racks may spill or topple off. Both occurrences pose
a life-safety risk to the exposed shopping public. The immediate
stimulus for the project that resulted in this report was a 2003
request from the State of Washington to the Federal Emergency
Management Agency (FEMA) for guidance concerning the life-safety
risk posed by the storage racks in publicly accessible areas of
retail stores, especially the risk of rack collapse of loss of
stored goods during an earthquake. FEMA asked the Building Seismic
Safety Council (BSSC) to develop the requested guidance. To do so,
the BSSC established a Rack Project Task Group composed of
practicing engineers, storage rack designers, researchers,
representatives of the Rack Manufacturers Institute (RMI) and the
Retail Industry Leaders Association, and members of applicable
technical subcommittees responsible for updating the NEHRP
Recommended Provisions. In developing this guidance document, the
Task Group focused primarily on steel single selective pallet
storage racks. It reviewed available information on storage rack
performance during earthquakes and the background on the
development of standards and code requirements for storage racks;
assessed seismic requirements for storage racks and current
practices with respect to rack design, maintenance and operations,
quality assurance, and post-earthquake inspections; and examined
available research and testing data. Based on its study, the Task
Group developed short-term recommendations to improve current
practice and formulated long-term recommendations to serve as the
basis for improved standards documents such as the NEHRP
Recommended Provisions, ASCE 7, and the RMI-developed storage rack
specification. Over the near term, the Task Group recommends that
the 2003 NEHRP Recommended Provisions requirements for steel single
selective pallet storage rack design be followed and that
connections be checked in accordance with a procedure to be
developed by RMI. The Task Group also recommends that additional
guidance presented in this report be voluntarily adopted by store
owners and operators. Further, given the fact that maintenance and
use of storage racks is a key element to their acceptable
performance during earthquakes, store owners and operators should
adopt an appropriate quality assurance plan; as a minimum, the best
self-imposed practices of store owners and operators should be
maintained. The Task Group's primary long-term recommendation is
that the RMI specification be brought into conformance with the
2003 NEHRP Recommended Provisions, which is the basis for seismic
requirements found in current seismic design standards and model
building codes. The Task Group also recommends that optional
performance-based and limit state procedures and component cyclic
testing procedures be incorporated into the RMI-developed
specification. Compliance with these procedures will demonstrate
that the storage racks have the capacity to resist maximum
considered earthquake ground motions without collapse. It also is
recommended that regulatory bodies periodically review the quality
assurance programs of stores and implement any regulations needed
to satisfy life-safety concerns that relate to the securing of rack
contents and rack maintenance and use.
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