Don’t throw the past away
You might need it some rainy day
Dreams can come true again
When everything old is new again
These popular lyrics, from the 1974 movie “All That Jazz,” hints at our tendency to grasp fleetingly at the latest trend —always believing that something newer and better will come around […]
Though engineering standards and their relationship to seismic activity have been a concern for well over a century, significant strides have been made in recent decades about understanding the forces of earthquakes on buildings. This increased knowledge has allowed us to not only design structures that are more earthquake resistant, […]
In Southern California, earthquake building codes should be taken seriously. Everyone who owns a building in Los Angeles needs to take responsibility to get seismic retrofitting work done to prevent or reduce property damage, injury and death from earthquakes.
As we know, earthquakes aren’t just a possibility here—they’re a certainty. […]
California recently rolled out its early warning system throughout the state, including in San Diego.
The so-called ShakeAlert warnings are being pushed through two delivery systems: a cell phone app called MyShake and the same wireless notification system that issues Amber Alerts.
This is great news. The early warning system operates on […]
Five years after the City of Los Angeles enacted what was at the time the nation’s most sweeping earthquake retrofit law, progress toward resilience has taken a resounding leap forward.
A “safety revolution” is spreading along our streets and back alleys, with steel frames and strong walls fortifying buildings that were […]
Many of us grew up in homes containing lead and asbestos, and as a result, we may sometimes downplay the health hazards these substances pose to humans and the environment alike.
We might feel tempted to bypass the rules by removing these contaminants undercover — hoping that no one finds out.
[…]
In 1971, the Anheuser-Busch brewery in Van Nuys, California, suffered extensive damage in the 6.5-magnitude Sylmar earthquake. Forced to cease operations in order to rebuild the facility, the self-proclaimed “King of Beers” took another hard financial hit as competitors made inroads into the Anheuser-Busch market during this time. Faced with the […]
If a major earthquake were to strike today, would you rather have ample food and water for your family, or a job?
Ideally, you would want both. One is for short-term survival, the other for long-term sustainability.
That’s why, as millions of Californians took part in the recent Great Shakeout earthquake drill […]
Unsettling news about earthquakes has rattled much of California this year.
Thirty years after the devastating Loma Prieta earthquake of 1989, a U.S. Geological Survey geologist is calling the Bay Area a “tectonic time bomb,” and the head of U.C. Berkeley’s Seismological Lab is warning that “Loma Prieta was not the […]
The news is grim: More than half of UCSD’s buildings are a “serious” or “severe risk to life,” according to an internal seismic safety survey obtained by NBC Channel 7.
Two hundred sixty-eight of the university’s 528 buildings are in “poor condition” with “serious” risk of injury in a major earthquake. […]
