Engineer Peter Yanev writes in the New York Times that the West Coast (in particular, the Pacific Northwest, like Seattle, where I currently reside) of the United States is less prepared than Chile was for a major earthquake. We should expect much more devastation and more casualties if a quake of a similar magnitude hits near one of our major cities, especially for as long as 120 seconds, as occurred in Chile.
Despite Chile’s exacting construction codes, which often exceed those of California and Japan, the performance of numerous high-rise buildings was worryingly poor….
But one thing is already clear: based on the kind of damage that buildings suffered in Chile, tall structures in the earthquake zones of the United States appear to be at much higher risk than we thought. This lesson should be of obvious concern to San Francisco and Los Angeles. But it is actually the Pacific Northwest that is most vulnerable to a mega-quake like Chile’s.
(HT: Chris)
medium haircuts…
Pretty nice post. I just stumbled upon your weblog and wanted to say that I have truly enjoyed surfing around your blog posts. After all I’ll be subscribing to your feed and I hope you write again very soon!…