We’ve covered before on this very website the fact that I am irrationally paranoid about earthquakes, so any headline with the word in the title is going to set me clicking. I don’t know if this latest city report on how Seattle is screwed in the event of another earthquake was spurred by the recent terrible events in China, but today the Mayor reported that there are around 1,000 buildings in town prepared to collapse in the event of a quake. They’re all old brick buildings in Pioneer Square, Capitol Hill, SoDo, and the International District, which should come as a surprise to exactly no one, considering how after the Nisqually quake most of the uninhabitable buildings were from the 1930’s [Times]. Not so big on the building codes, back then.

Shockingly, Mayor Nickels wants to put together a committee that will spend about a year studying retrofitting, incentives and penalties, time lines, and all of the things that are required in order to change the building codes, which will have to go through City Council to be approved. My first guess is that having your building fall down because you didn’t do earthquake retrofits is not going to be penalty enough. They’ll be notifying the owners of these unsteady buildings.

California is the only other state that requires earthquake retrofitting. This is why I am a little afraid of California.

Related posts:

1. Earthquake watch: Interbay is toast
2. Today’s news: Earthquakes are dangerous
3. 5-Year Anniversary
4. How I’m voting: I’m not
5. South Lake DisUnion