Few other places in the western world could withstand a 7.1 as well as SoCal did yesterday!

[NewsCenter28]

Good on them for strong building codes and excellent emergency response which led to the 7.1 having only minimal damage. A 7.1 is strong enough to wipe out a town like Ridgecrest but it looks like the earth fought Ridgecrest twice and lost not once, but twice!

We see the same thing in hurricanes. A category 5 hit Florida last October and barely left a mark.

Looks like we learned our lessons from past disasters and Mother Nature has at least a formidable foe in us.

[msongs]

1. wood frame houses are quite earthquake resistant. windows may break, plaster may

crack, but they are not likely to fall down

[JI7]

2. there is a reason for regulations

just think of other countries where this happens without many standards or enforcement of them.

[BigmanPigman]

3. We can do better though.

Japan has the best and most current anti-earthquake ideas/input. I always listen to what they say and do when it comes to earthquakes and tsunamis. If they had a 9+ quake and hardly any deaths or damage you know that they know what they are doing.

[dalton99a]

11. +1. They spent enormous sums on technology against earthquakes and tsunamis.

Japan has gone much further than the United States in outfitting new buildings with advanced devices called base isolation pads and energy dissipation units to dampen the ground’s shaking during an earthquake.

The isolation devices are essentially giant rubber-and-steel pads that are installed at the very bottom of the excavation for a building, which then simply sits on top of the pads. The dissipation units are built into a building’s structural skeleton. They are hydraulic cylinders that elongate and contract as the building sways, sapping the motion of energy.

The country that gave the world the word tsunami, especially in the 1980s and 1990s, built concrete seawalls in many communities, some as high as 40 feet, which amounted to its first line of defense against the water. In some coastal towns, in the event of an earthquake, networks of sensors are set up to set off alarms in individual residences and automatically shut down floodgates to prevent waves from surging upriver.

[BigmanPigman]

15. Exactly, and the citizens are familiar with the various

emergency procedures and precautions. They know it is serious business.

[A HERETIC I AM]

4. Hurricane Michael barely left a mark?!? Are you serious?

Please do a Google image search of “Hurricane Michael damage” and tell me you don’t see just a few marks.
It fucking DENUDED almost the entire town of Mexico Beach.

Shit, they’re STILL cleaning that up almost a year later.

Barely left a mark my ass.

[NewsCenter28]

9. Sorry for not being clearer

Regarding Hurricane Michael, I meant there weren't horrific fatalities either.

[A HERETIC I AM]

12. Please define "horrific" in that context

Because I think 31 people dying as a direct result of a storm is pretty horrific. What’s your threshold? 65 people? Hurricane Andrew. 1800? Hurricane Katrina.



https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_Michael

You chose a bad example in trying to make your point.

[Tipperary]

14. Thank you.

Katrina left no mark either.

Those wildfires in CA awhile back were barely noticed.

If that 7.1 had hit LA, it would have been a different story - so said a seismologist I heard on CNN today.

[SharonAnn]

5. Don't forget Chile. I was there during the 8.9 and there was ver little

Damage. One picture shown worldwide of the one apartment building that partially collapsed. There weren’t more pictures because there weren’t more examples.

Wall cracks, broken water lines in a few places, lightweight pedestrian overpasses, really pretty minor. That’s one reason I didn’t realize, though I lived through it, how serious an earthquake it was.

[Blue_true]

6. Nahhhhh. Mother Nature is just saving her middleweight shit for later.

She knows that we won't survive that, so no need to plan the heavyweight stuff.

[Xolodno]

7. As I said in another post...

...Repubs bitch and moan about California's regulations stifling business. But when shit hits the fan, the government isn't doing a massive bailout...or even declaring the town lost and should be bull dozed. Those regulations save tax payers money...and countless lives.

[Retrograde]

8. Once more for the geographically challenged

California is a big state - 3rd after Alaska and Texas. We were lucky that this week's quakes were in a relatively unpopulated and remote area.

We do have strong building codes, and people who've lived here long enough to have gone through a few quakes do take precautions, but there are still much more heavily populated areas on major faultlines that may not be as lucky. And we have a lot of people who moved here during the quiet period of the last 20 years who've never experienced a quake and may not be aware of what they can do in advance to prevent harm to themselves.

[NewsCenter28]

10. I disagree

The poster above describes the experience had in Chile during their 8+ earthquake, which I remember watching on TV all night. The poster describes very little damage even in Chile. I suspect Los Angeles or San Francisco would be similarly luckily if that 7.1 last night had, had it's epicentre right beneath them. In my opinion, what it really comes down to should SF/LA ever have another big one will be how many old buildings are left standing that are not built up to the newer stronger building codes. If we can go another decade or two without that kind of situation, those old buildings may all be gone and replaced with up-to-spec earthquake-coded buildings.

Also, I am well aware of how big CA is geographically and also that it has 55 (the most) electoral college votes.

[Retrograde]

13. An 8+ earthquake is 10 times bigger

than a 7+ one. Chile's population density may not be the same as the Bay Area's, and I don't know where it was centered with respect to populated areas.

I've been through a ~7 point earthquake - Loma Prieta in 1989. We were very lucky then. Since that event, the population of the area has roughly doubled, and while we do have stringent building codes we also have a lot of older buildings (I live in one) and infrastructure that hasn't been improved.

I don't think earthquakes care about how many electoral votes a region has.

[Celerity]

16. Hurricane Michael Damage: $25.1 billion (2018 USD)

We see the same thing in hurricanes. A category 5 hit Florida last October and barely left a mark.