Congrats to the peeps in California for building infrastructure that can

[malaise]

handle a serious quake. Sure there was damage but I haven't heard of any deaths so far.

Both the 2010 7.0 in Haiti and the 6.3 that hit Christ Church New Zealand in 2011 were weaker than last night's 7.1 quake in California

With approximately 3 million people affected, this earthquake was the most devastating natural disaster ever experienced in Haiti, the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere. Roughly 250,000 lives were lost and 300,000 people were injured. About 1.5 million individuals were forced to live in makeshift internally displaced persons (IDP) camps. As a result, the country faced the greatest humanitarian need in its history.

At 12.51 p.m. on Tuesday 22 February 2011, a magnitude 6.3 earthquake caused severe damage in Christchurch and Lyttelton, killing 185 people and injuring several thousand. The earthquake’s epicentre was near Lyttelton, just 10 km southeast of Christchurch’s central business ...

And the science based discussions coming from Cal Tech on KTLA are refreshing.

[RHMerriman]

1. Amazing what investment in the bread and butter of government - building codes, enforcement,

Amazing what investment in the bread and butter of local and state government - building codes, enforcement, permitting, urban planning, fire and rescue, law enforcement, resource management, and education - can accomplish.

Infant mortality rates alone give proof, but the aftermath of major natural disasters are another comparison and data point.

[malaise]

5. You nailed it

[RHMerriman]

8. Yep. Government works in California.

Yep. Government works in California, and it has worked especially well since the GOP was driven from the state in defeat.

Something to think about when it comes to the nation...

[Wounded Bear]

2. Yeah, well, they kind of learned it the hard way...

Lot of damage in years past that led to building codes and regs that help prevent the damage.

[Brother Buzz]

3. I learned construction in San Francisco

And arguably, San Francisco had the toughest seismic codes in the nation at one time. A couple of years later, I was supervising a job in Chicago for a West Coast corporation, and when I instructed the subs to install the seismic bracing tie above the drop ceiling, something specked in the plans, I got blank stares, "Huh?

Some seismic stuff is simple and easy, and some of it is expensive, but it works.

[malaise]

6. But it works

That's the point although Retrograde's point is valid in terms of where the quake was centered

[Brother Buzz]

9. Unlike the The Hayward Fault in the SF Bay area

WHEN the big one lets loose on the Hayward Fault it will be cataclysmic, and there just isn't much that could be done to reduce the damage.

[Retrograde]

4. Nature helped by centering the quakes

in a remote, sparsely inhabited part of the desert. So while California does have building codes that take earthquakes into account we got lucky this week: a similar earthquake closer to Los Angeles or San Francisco would have caused significant damage despite the preparations.

[malaise]

7. Good point

[Hekate]

10. Luck was on our side in terms of population density this time, but we have been upgrading for years

The Northridge Quake caught a lot of people off guard in terms of older buildings, like houses that were pushed off their cement slabs because either they were not pegged down in the first place, or termites had weakened the structures. Brick buildings are a real hazard, unless reinforced in specific ways. But even some newer buildings turned out not to have been well thought out: can't remember if it was USC or UCLA that lost an enormous and fatally heavy slab of decorative rock off one of its building faces.

In the following years, "earthquake retrofitting" was a real thing all around the state in public buildings. A small town inland in Santa Barbara County got caught out belatedly by a sharp shock that brought down the old brick town hall (iirc) and killed someone. There was a certain amount of public shaming because they had put off the retrofitting due to cost.

You get to know your own region. What I don't know about tornadoes would fill a FEMA handbook -- but televise an earthquake in Haiti or anywhere else in the world and every talking head on TV in California is mentioning the lack of rebar and the visibly poor quality of cement.

[Raine]

11. Probably would have been way different if it had been in a big city like Los Angeles

San Francisco or San Diego and it had been hard jerking quakes instead of rolling ones. We were lucky ... this time.