On November 26, 2019, a magnitude 6.4 (Mw) earthquake occurred in Durrës, Albania, causing considerable damages to many surrounding buildings. In this paper, a six floor RC structure, with a frame system, located in Durrës is taken in consideration. The structure suffered significant structural damages due to strong ground motion. The institutions responsible for the situation assessment described it as a structure with the high-risk collapse. For this reason, on December 3, 2019, the engineer corps demolished this building with controlled explosion. The purpose of this study is to analyse the collapse mechanism of the six floor structure, based on well-established Finite Element Method. This structure will therefore be simulated with advanced modelling software, such as ETABS Ultimate. Analytical results, obtained by the numerical methods are then compared with the observed In-Situ damages.

an earthquake with magnitude Mw = 6.4 occurred in the city of Durrës, with epicenter about 16 km southwest of Mamurras. This seismic event caused 51 loss of life, hundreds injured and hundreds of damaged buildings. One of the typified structures, identified by the authors with the most cases of damage or even collapse, is the structure Type no. 82/2 built in some areas of the city of Durrës, in the period 1983-1993. The purpose of this study is to analyze the behavior of this type of structure during seismic loading (for two cases, five and six storey, from the same typology), using the non-linear static procedure (Pushover). The obtained results are compared with the damages recorded in the field for these buildings, concluding with their main causes. According to this study it appears that the main cause of failures occurred in this type of building is the reduction of the reinforcement amount from the ground floor to the first floor by 35.5% and percentage of reinforcement required for the given section exceeds the requirements of design standards (Eurocode-2 and KTP-2-89) by around 30%. Also on these failures contribute the low strength of concrete used in construction of some of these buildings (the compressive strength results 50% less than required) and the use of smooth rebar.