Frightening and destructive earthquakes
have rocked the San Francisco Bay Area,
Coalinga, Calif., Alaska, Mexico City,
Armenia, and Japan in the 1980s. Earthquakes
have also been felt in the Midwest,
the South, and in New England. Recent
information suggests that there are potentially
active fault systems in New York City
as well as other parts of the mid-Atlantic
region.
In fact recently revised earthquake hazard
maps show that in the United States alone
over 50 million people live in areas of
greater-than-average seismic risk, while perhaps
a half a billion share the risk world
wide.
While the idea of earthquake proofing is
naïve, the need to protect the structures we
design and build is valid and real. Applying
what