[Kevin M]

Originally Posted by sperry

Um, all large buildings have to be retrofitted to meet *current* earthquake standards.

The 194x building I used to work in in Walnut Creek was given the option of being condemed or retrofitted at a cost of hundreds of thousands of dollars because much of it was still original brick masonry. They retrofitted it, and now it's got a steel girder skeleton inside holding up all the brick. If a major quake hits it, it'll surely be damaged, but it's not gonna collapse and kill everyone inside.

As far as the weather getting worse... some will argue global warming, some will argue it's just a natural shift in the weather... maybe it's just another side effect of the huge Tsunami earlier this year. Either way, global weather patterns change far quicker than geological patterns. Earthquakes aren't going to suddenly get worse... they've been as bad as they are for the last 100,000 years, if not longer (I'll differ to Scotty, since he's the actual geologist). But basically, as long as we continue to have all the micro-quakes every month, there's no reason to expect large-scale quakes to be more frequent or more powerful than the current 8.0 per 100 years average (or whatever the actual numbers are) that we currently deal with.

I fully expect the west coast to suffer another major quake in the next 50 years, but I certainly don't expect to see 50% of the buildings near the quake collapse, nor would I expect to see more than 100 fatalities. Which is a hell of a lot better than the folks of New Orleans (and the rest of LA/MS) are doing.

But earth is only 5,000 years old... duh.