Quote:
Originally Posted by StEC
Serious question are buildings in our area built to any sort of earthquake code? I remember learning in school that there are some fault lines that run from Toronto to Niagara under Lake Ontario that had the potential to create a major earthquake one day (even though they are rare here).
Looking at this building I would not even want to be in it during a very minor earthquake. That looks like a lego brick kind of construction!? Is this like the cheapest form of construction?
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Armchair engineer here (actually my chair has no arms, so my qualifications are even less impressive) I'd probably be more worried about buildings that are completely cast concrete structures. The "lego" ones should be designed to have a bit of give, any motion would be transferred along the seams in the structure rather than causing cracks.
That said, I'm sure the cast structures account for this stuff too. And our quakes tend to be very short sharp occurrences of relatively low magnitudes, unlike the continuous shaking that happens along the kinds of fault lines on the west coast or in Asia which have caused collapses of buildings, elevated freeways, sections of bridges, etc.