Earthquake Retrofitting

Click here http://www.iris.edu/seismon/

A typical retrofit will include:

• Home Bolt Down
  Steel bolts or special foundation plates are fastened to the house's sill plate (the plate that connects the concrete foundation to the pony wall) to anchor it to the foundation.
• Floor and Understructure Connection
  Steel framing clips are attached to the pony wall along the sill plate to bolt the two together.
• Increasing Shear Strength
  Sheets of half-inch plywood are nailed along the pony wall to increase its shear (horizontal) strength.

Your house is probably your most expensive expenditure and greatest investment. The potential damages to your house in an earthquake if it is not up to code are many times as expensive as the cost of retrofit. Unfortunately, earthquake insurance is not adequate protection against damage received in a severe quake. Insurance deductibles are usually high - 10% of the value of your home. Which means that your deductible on a $300,000 home would be $30,000. Additionally, if your home is damaged or demolished due to an earthquake, you are still responsible to continue paying your mortgage.


Earthquake Retrofitting
If you live in earthquake county and have a home built before 1980, chances are you will need to earthquake retrofit to avoid the risk of sustaining serious damage during an earthquake. An earthquake retrofit reinforces a house to its foundation so that it will be more resistant to earthquakes. An earthquake retrofit brings a home up to current safety codes and significantly reduces the damage it will sustain during an earthquake. At-risk houses have not been adequately bolted to their foundations may shake off their foundations and even collapse in a serious earthquake, often causing irreparable damage. If a house is severely damaged, you may be prevented from entering it even to claim possessions. In fact, it's estimated that 95% of houses that have been shaken from their foundations during an earthquake have to be demolished.

Links and Resources:

• U.S. Geological Survey Earthquake Hazards Program

  

New: Earthquake browser with 3D viewer!       Nuevo: Navegador de Terremotos con Vista 3D!   y Boletines en español

IEB is a new, interactive map that not only shows the latest earthquakes but allows you to display thousands of quakes from an archive of 3.4 million spanning from 1970 to minutes ago. It's the IRIS Earthquake Browser, or just IEB, and one of many features is that you can rotate quakes in 3D! (No Flash or Java used)

Click here http://www.iris.edu/seismon/

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