If a structural engineer in Southern California is right, half a million people in his state are living in buildings that are likely to collapse if an earthquake strikes.
Called “soft-story” structures, they are apartment buildings with a parking lot underneath. They were a popular way to combine housing and parking in California’s post-war boom. But the posts that carry the building’s weight were often designed to maximize parking space, not to withstand the side-to-side shifting of an earthquake.
A powerful tremblor can collapse these posts and the structures they support. Some owners are taking steps to retrofit their buildings, but many more properties are at risk.
“Soft-story” buildings are a metaphor for our times. There is peril in our world we cannot see on the surface. All seems fine today, but when a crisis strikes tomorrow, the hidden danger becomes all too apparent and devastating.
“I only did what I had to do”
Crisis reveals character. Consider two examples.
A man ran into a burning building in Aberdeen, Washington, last Thursday to save his eight-year-old niece. When a fire broke out in their home, he rushed inside, grabbed her, and took his shirt off to wrap around her face so she would not inhale smoke.
Derrick Byrd, age twenty, is recovering in a Seattle hospital from burns on his face, neck, arms, and back. He said, “I don’t care if I was burning. I just wanted to make sure I got her out.”
On the other side of the world: you may not remember Filippo Magnini, the Italian swimmer who won a bronze medal in the 2004 Olympics. But the man he saved from drowning will not forget him.
Off the Mediterranean island of Sardinia, the man was chasing a float that had been carried by the wind into the ocean. He began to struggle in the water, so lifeguards rushed to deploy a rescue boat.
However, Magnini was closer. He…
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