Quote of the Day: Earthquakes

From an article on the L’Aquila earthquake in Italy:

“Once again we are faced with the lack of control on the quality of construction,” Franco Barberi, who heads a committee assessing earthquake risks at Italy’s Civil Protection agency, told reporters in L’Aquila.

“In California, an earthquake like this one would not have killed a single person,” he said.

That’s the big point right there. As scary as earthquakes are - buildings in CA have been build rigidly to seismic codes so that they’ll withstand earthquakes. That’s why you can have 4.0 quakes where there’s only cosmetic damage (cracks in plaster, stucco) and things knocked off of shelves.

I have so many friends across the internet who’ve told me how scary they thought earthquakes were because they were worried buildings would collapse. So long as a building in CA has been retrofitted, it’s safe. Believe it or not, retrofitting isn’t one of the things that people skimp on. (While it’s a pain, the cost of retrofitting is substantially less than paying millions to the families of people who might die in your building if it isn’t retrofitted)

Originally published at Whitney Drake. You can comment here or there.