Buildings that are not up to code can rapidly turn into rubble, trapping people inside and blocking emergency crews from moving their way through the city. Without proper preparation, many households do not have the capacity to survive the days or weeks it can take for rescue to arrive.

Pack an emergency preparedness kit

1. Drinking water (at least one gallon per person per day)
2. Nonperishable food, such as canned veggies and protein bars.
3. Manual can opener.
4. Flashlights or portable lanterns and extra batteries.
5. First aid kit.
6. A crank- or battery-powered radio.

Prepare for the Big One: FEMA Earthquake Checklist

• Food.
• Flashlights and spare batteries.
• Water.
• Portable, battery-powered radio or television and spare batteries.
• Fire extinguishers.
• Special needs.
• Prepare customized emergency plans for people with disabilities in advance.
• Tools.

Preparing for an Earthquake

1. Talk to your children about earthquakes. Explain to your child what could happen, using simple, age-appropriate words.
2. Find safe spots in your home.
3. Practice earthquake drills.
4. Learn your child’s school or daycare disaster plans.
5. Keep contact information current.

Seven Steps to Earthquake Safety

• Step 1 – Identify Hazards in the Home:
• Step 2 – Create Your Disaster Plan.
• Step 3 – Create Disaster Supply Kits.
• Step 4 – Identify Your Home’s Potential Weaknesses.
• Step 5 – Drop, Cover, and Hold On.
• Step 6 – After the Shaking Stops Check for Damages and Injuries Needing Immediate Attention.

You will never know if the first jolt is start of the big one…so always Drop, Cover, and Hold On immediately! A parent or caregiver should carefully pick up the baby in their arms, holding the child against their chest, and carry them as they Drop, Cover and Hold On.

Fortunately, most of us live in wood-frame houses. In contrast, a brittle structure is unable to deform during an earthquake without collapsing. In an earthquake, your wood-frame house might survive, but your chimney, made of brick not reinforced with rebar, might collapse.

To withstand collapse, buildings need to redistribute the forces that travel through them during a seismic event. Shear walls, cross braces, diaphragms, and moment-resisting frames are central to reinforcing a building. Shear walls are a useful building technology that helps to transfer earthquake forces.

The current building code (since IBC 2012) is based on a “risk-targeted” concept. The design hazard values in the code are developed to create a uniform risk at all locations where buildings designed to these values have a 1% probability of collapse in 50 years (the typical life span of a building).

Using the Department of Building and Safety website, you can easily check to see if your building is on that list. Just enter your address into the search tool and click on the “Soft-story Retrofit Program Information” button once your building’s information appears.

While high rise buildings would suffer structural damage, the shaking produced by the earthquake is a long period of slow shaking. But because of its height, and the closeness of its center of gravity to the shaking, low-rise buildings in earthquake zones might not survive.

Like thousands of other buildings of all sizes across Southern California, these towers were built using a method known as welded steel moment-frame construction (WSMF), which was popular from the 1960s through the early 1990s. It was believed to be, as FEMA later noted, “earthquake-proof.”

Windows, doors, floors and stairs out of level. Sagging wooden floors. Excessive snow or water on a roof. Cracking noises coming from a building.

Five reasons why buildings collapse

• The foundations are too weak. Adequate foundations can be costly.
• The building materials aren’t strong enough.
• Workers make mistakes.
• The load is heavier than expected.
• The strength isn’t tested.

There are numerous reasons why a building can collapse. Construction and demolition can also be involved when a building collapses, either intentionally or unintentionally. During construction, poor planning can result in an area being too weak and collapsing before the building is complete.

The first step in how to tell if a home is structurally sound is to simply look around the outside and notice any issues, aesthetic or otherwise, that may be present. Many of the seeming aesthetic issues you’re having on the exterior of your home are actually signs of structural damage.

Here are 10 warning signs of foundation problems:

• Exterior Cracks.
• Interior Sheetrock Cracks.
• Doors Out of Square and Uneven Floors.
• Door Frame/Window Frame Separation from Brick.
• Rotten Wood – Pier & Beams.
• Bouncing floors – Rotten Wood.
• Tile Cracks.
• Expansion Joint Seperation.

Hairline cracks of less than one millimetre in width or slight cracks of between one and five millimetres are generally not a cause for concern. If you begin to notice these, they can generally be filled and painted over as they’re a crack in the plaster but not in the wall itself.

The foundation starts settling. In many cases, the expansion or consolidation of the soil results in foundation movement. This, in turn, can make the entire building sink gradually. If you spot cracks or gaps in the foundation many years after construction, it could be a sign that your house is settling.