Big earthquakes turn weak brick buildings into deathtraps, as Morocco tragically showed
The scenes of devastation from the Morocco earthquake are both horrifying and grimly familiar.
Piles of mud bricks littering whole neighborhoods where homes and businesses once stood. Rescuers walking over mounds of debris so massive they obscure the landscape. Residents so fearful of more buildings falling that they're sleeping on the street.
The hard-hit ancient city of Marrakech, founded a millennium ago, might seem half a world away from California.
But the destruction wrought by weak brick structures breaking apart, unable to withstand seismic activity, is something with which California must also grapple.
The 1925 Santa Barbara and 1933 Long Beach earthquakes offered early warnings that unreinforced masonry buildings could become deathtraps in a major quake. New construction of such buildings was
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