Tremors II

OK, I got my sleep inter­rupted by a very long series of tremors, and we’ve just turned on the telly to watch CNA talk about last night’s quake, after­shocks and then this morning’s shak­ing news.
“Nor­mally our build­ing code is suf­fi­cient to build build­ings of safety”, says the engineer/professor who’s a guest on CNA right now. So, how safe are we? When do we evac­u­ate? When do we rush down the stairs and stand in the car park, within the shad­ows of our tall apart­ment blocks?

How sure are we that the build­ings we live and work in haven’t been dam­aged by the tremors? What’s our build­ing code? Does it specif­i­cally say that the build­ing must be able to with­stand sways of up to 1m? So many ques­tions, so hard to type. Because I’m sleepy, and I would have swayed as I walked out to get my com­puter even if there wasn’t a quake anyway.

The engineer/professor also says that we should evac­u­ate to where “only if there’s really open ground”. So, OK, we’ll just wait till the open ground even­tu­ates before we do any­thing. Per­son­ally, I reckon the waves of en-bloc sales do more dam­age to old apart­ments here than quakes ever do.

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