I posted a bunch to s.e.d. The building has poured concrete sides, and
the front/back are "soft", mostly doors and glass, so the hazard is
that it will parallelogram sideways, the sides will crumble and the
floors will break away, pancake, and squash everything inside. It's
1935-vintage concrete, not prestressed and not nearly as tough as
modern stuff. The plywood and steel and bolting are supposed to make
this less likely. All our parts racks and partitions and stuff will be
bolted to the walls, too.
Like our present place, it's mostly wood, RF-transparent, and in sight
of Sutro Tower, 25 megawatts of involuntary EMI testing.
The worst earthquake in modern US history was on the New Madrid fault,
1803 I think, near what is now Kansas City and Memphis; it sheared off
whole forests. Those cities take no earthquake precautions. Places
like New York and Boston get occasional severe quakes and would be
piles of rubble; fortunately the interval is 500 years or more.
John
