Earthquake Planners Need Help With Their 'Resilient Cities' Plan

摘要

These are scary times, and for those citizens living in earthquake country, the times are not just scary, they are terrifying. For starters, a major earthquake is overdue along the Hay-ward Fault, in the East Bay area near San Francisco: It could happen at any moment. San Francisco has 120,000 buildings, at least 90% of them erected before the adoption of modern building codes in the 1970s. Most won't flat-out collapse in a city-centered earthquake the size of 1989's Loma Prieta, but there will be damage beyond repair from the quake and ensuing fire to about a quarter of the buildings, say San Francisco planners.