Monday, May 12, 2008

Sad news of an earthquake in China

Just caught the beginning of this and as time goes by the death toll is rising. Started with 7500 deaths and is now at 8500. Let us take this as a wake up call for those of us that live in the northwest. Yes it has and can happen again here. With the population growth here it will be worse the next time around. I'm personally using this opportunity to make a few upgrades to my place by adding some structural supports where I can. I'm trying to do this without a major remodel by using the California codes as a guide. It seems they are still a bit stricter than our own here. As I figure it it's just a matter of time before the next big one hits.

Sad day for China

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

If we lost 8,000 people in one event we'd have to invade something and get another 8,000 killed.

Thanks for dropping by my blog. I'll check you out from time to time.

Snave said...

northcountryliberal is correct on that point! If there was a large earthquake in the PNW would it get blamed on Canada?

We aren't immune to quakes out here in NE Oregon, either. Our hospital is actually built on slumping ground near a fault line, so good luck with all the hospital-based triage, emergency care, etc. should such a disaster strike here.

I can't imagine what a major quake would do to a city like Portland or Seattle, or any town of any size for that matter...

Demeur said...

Snave
Luckily much of Seattle has been undergoing seismic upgrades for the last ten or fifteen years. It's still a crap shoot though because nobody knows what would happen in a earthquake on the scale of Chinas'. I know some buildings would withstand a 9.0 because I worked on them and my hats off to the iron workers who put tons of reinforcing into these buildings. I'll bet you can guess which buildings got the upgrades. On the internet they have .gov after their address.

Demeur said...

Northcountry
Yeah every once in a while I get a good idea for a post but I'm better known for my comments on other peoples blogs.