engineering experience from the montenegro (yugoslavia) earthquake of april 15, 1979.

on april 15, 1979,a destructive earthquake struck the southwestern part of yugoslavia, in which the total damage exceeded 2.7 billion dollars. in this paper, major engineering lessons learned in this earthquake are discussed and illustrated with representative photographs. the main causes of failure of masonary and reinforced concrete buildings are pointed out. effect of architectural design on the dynamic behavior of structures are described. finally, damages due to the ,ground failure particularly soil liquefaction are presented in the last section.