I was there for the '69, '73 and '94 earthquakes. The '69 , happened early in the morning. I was in the hallway and it felt like someone was running a rolling pin on my feet. The doorway was going up and down, first one side ,then the other. In '73, I was in my new house and it swayed and creaked, but no damage. In '94, it was a bad one. Yes it was a vertical thrust but also a shift. Houses built on alluvial soil got it worse than those on rocks.[Simplest way to say it]. LA got the worst of it. Buildings with "Soft storys " ,those are like condos with parking underneath, went down. The Structural engineers Assoc. of So cal held a gathering at the airport in LA to talk about what happened. I couldn't believe my ears. Basically, the new High Rises, that were built to the latest standards , were screwed. The joints on all of them, failed, depending on which was the weakest link, the column, the beam or the girder. You could re-weld them if you could get to them but, the corners were covered by panels , welded to the beams and girders.You would have to strip the building down to a skeleton, again, to fix the problem. Make sure your building is on solid grund. Have a Soils Engineer do testing to see if that is so. Then make sure your connections are metal,[with wood], or rebar with concrete or block . You want the place to stay in one piece and eliminate any potential ground shifting from consolidation of soil. Do that and you should have no problems. Also stay out of high rises. Just MHO, BB
