Earthquake mitigation ideas:

[Are_grits_groceries]

http://www.menainfra.com/news/improving-earthquake-monitoring-systems/

Interesting concepts.

[secondwind]

1. Very interesting. We're in front of the beach here in Dominican Republic, in the middle of a

100-yr-old coconut mangrove, with bushes and hedges as well. I'm happy I read this.

:)

[SharonAnn]

2. After more than 2 weeks here in Chile and numerous earthquakes and aftershocks

I'm ready to come home. I've now gotten to the point where I can feel most 5. and above aftershocks, though previously I would never have noticed them.

It just takes going through an 8.8 and a couple of above 6.0 quakes and one learns what is going on.

The night of the 8.8 I had taken a sleeping pill to sleep. My husband had died about 12 hours before, and I woke up at 3:30 (sort of woke up) and couldn't figure out what was going on. There was a terrible noise, very low (like the Death Star on Star Wars) that was vibrating everything and my bed seemed to be pitching around, back and forth and up and down. I got up and staggered to the hallway where I found my sister-in-law and her daughter coming to get me to huddle under a door frame. And she was yelling "This is bad, this is very bad". And when I gave her a blank look, still not understanding what was going on, she yelled again "This is very, very bad. This is the worst I've ever know. Absolutely the worst! It's a very bad earthquake!" Since she's lived in Santiago for more than 60 years, that meant something to me, though I still couldn't quite process it. So much had happened that day, I had no experience with earthquakes, and I was half drugged. What an experience!

Since then, after experiencing some major aftershocks, I've become more sensitive to them What a lesson!

But it's amazing that in the city of Santiago, with it's huge skyscrapers and other very large buildings and shopping centers, that there was been so little damage. Quite a compliment to the strict building codes that were put in place under Salvador Allende, in the early 1970's.

Unfortunately, the area around Concepcion was badly damaged, partly because it was the epicenter but in large part because it's full of older buildings. And any of the buildings that are built of adobe, crumble and fall apart easily. Apparently there's not an affordable way to make them earthquake resistant because it would significantly elevate the cost, thus making them un-affordable.