A team of engineers from the University of Hawai'i-Manoa will travel to the Big Island today to inspect bridges, port facilities and dams that could have been damaged during Sunday's earthquakes.

Besides looking for quake damage, the team hopes to gather information on what structures should be strengthened or retrofitted, said UH professor Ian Robertson, a structural engineer and chairman of the Hawai'i State Earthquake Advisory Committee.

"We hope to learn from this event and come back with some advice for state Civil Defense on how to prepare for the next one," said Robertson. "We need to be reviewing what happened, and learning as much as possible. We actually learn more from these events than from all the research we do in our labs, because you see the real-life consequences of the earthquake."

The group includes two geotechnical engineers: professors Horst Brandes and Peter Nicholson. The team will land in Kailua, Kona, and travel clockwise around the island's northern tip and toward Hilo.

Robertson said he is particularly interested in inspecting the Kealakaha Stream Bridge on Hawai'i Belt Road about 20 miles north of Hilo. The aging and obsolete bridge is scheduled to be replaced in a few years, and it is important to know how it held up during the quake, he said.

The new bridge is to be equipped with monitoring devices that will measure seismic activity and the bridge's reaction to it, Robertson said.

"Construction has been delayed by a couple of years, and I wish it had been done on time, because we would have had the instruments in to monitor what happened during this quake, but we'll be monitoring future quakes," he said.

The team will also inspect some buildings and earthen dams, as well as landslides and rockfalls, he said. Some old structures have been reinforced for safety, but others have not.

"We need to see if the retrofits have worked, and whether more retrofits are required," he said. "Quite a few bridges on the Hamakua Coast were retrofitted for earthquakes, but there are some that are still awaiting retrofit or replacement."

The dams deserve special scrutiny, even if they were inspected by others recently, Robertson said.

"It's prudent to look at those dams again after an earthquake of this magnitude, just to make sure that they're safe," he said, stressing that he had received no reports of damage.

Large quakes can cause subtle but significant damage to earthen structures, and may require precautions, such as keeping water levels low, Nicholson said.

Robertson said he was pleased that most Big Island buildings appear to have held up very well during the quake.

"A lot of the hotels built on the Kona coast particularly are fairly recent, and they were built to better standards than the older buildings in Hilo," he said.

But there may have been more damage to homes and older wooden structures that has been reported, he said.

Reach Johnny Brannon at jbrannon@honoluluadvertiser.com.