Abstract | Liquid storage tanks are critical components in the industrial sector, as large amounts of toxic, volatile, or flammable substances are stored in them. Motivated by their underlying vulnerability to physical damage caused by earthquakes, an empirical relationship is proposed to link the specific type of earthquakeinduced structural damage with the extent of material release that can potentially be triggered. To achieve this goal, an extensive database of recorded seismic-related failures of industrial tanks is examined and suitable damage states are identified. For each tank in the database, material release levels consistent with industry standard procedures for risk assessment are associated with the pertinent damage states. This is done with the consideration of characteristics that affect the seismic behaviour of tanks, such as aspect ratio and filling level. As a result, we propose a series of event trees for industrial liquid storage tanks that associate damage states and combinations thereof with material release levels. These event trees can be exploited for consequence analysis (e.g., to analyse the propagation of damage, or potential domino effects) within the context of seismic risk assessment for industrial facilities.