#post-earthquake-recovery

#post-earthquake-recovery

"What's the consequences if we allow 800 residents to be in a severe fire with no evacuation routes? We're being asked to choose between two really bad options."

"To address housing affordability in our community, we need all types of affordable housing options, including affordable ownership opportunities that allow individuals and families an opportunity to build equity alongside housing stability," said Santa Clara County Supervisor Betty Duong.

Meininger, who grew up in Germany but now lives in London, likes making things. So when he saw how much his young sons enjoyed the jungle gym and play forts at the local park, he made an indoor treehouse for them.

Beatriz Coca, a retired psychologist, discovered the need for a temporary power pole during her home construction process, highlighting the complexities faced by many rebuilding their homes.

"The hardest thing for both of us was losing home-the place you go that's safe, that provides comfort," Reilly says. The emotional toll was immediate, but the material losses were staggering in their own right: 'I lost the craziest archive of fashion and notes from Karl Lagerfeld'-pieces that, by their nature, are irreplaceable.

We're not expecting much in terms of winds, mainly just going to be flood potential. And thinking that the focus is going to be Oahu, Maui County and Big Island, with Kauai kind of being on the fringes of it versus, you know, all the Islands were impacted last time.

The rods are the central element of a novel seismic-responsive structural system that is designed to help the building snap back to its original shape in the event of a major earthquake. Their trick is an embedded cluster of taut cables made from a highly flexible compound called a shape-memory alloy that's capable of bending under tension-like the lateral shaking in a California earthquake-and then straightening out.

The city passed legislation nearly 18 months ago requiring property owners to retrofit their multi-story, wooden-frame buildings with at least three units constructed before 1990. It delayed implementation, however, when the federal government rolled back significant funding to facilitate the repairs. But after a court-granted injunction required the release of some of those federal funds, the city approved a $1.6 million pilot financing program in hopes of rolling out a larger critical life-safety initiative in the future.

Life doesn't pause for grief or fear. You might be going through something devastating but you're still packing lunches, still driving your kids to baseball practice, still showing up to work. One minute I find myself prepping for a whole home presentation and the next minute I'm checking the news, hoping and praying that no one has been killed on the streets today.

When a 7.7-magnitude earthquake hit Myanmar last year, roads buckled and thousands of buildings collapsed. But a group of small, ultra-low-cost homes made from bamboo survived without any damage. Finished just days before the quake, the houses are emergency shelters for some of the millions of people displaced by Myanmar's ongoing civil war. Myanmar-based architecture studio Blue Temple worked with its spinoff construction company Housing Now to make the simple prefab homes as low-cost as possible while still able to withstand natural disasters.

Earthquakes usually strike without warning. But sometimes they come in clusters dozens or even hundreds of small quakes concentrated in one area over days or weeks. Geologists call these clusters earthquake swarms, and while they can be unsettling, scientists say they rarely signal that a major quake is imminent. Unlike the familiar pattern of a single large earthquake followed by aftershocks, swarms consist of many small quakes without a clear mainshock.

A magnitude 6.2 earthquake hit western Japan on Tuesday, the country's meteorological agency said. The quake was relatively shallow, the meteorological service said, and struck around 10:18 a.m. local time (0118 GMT). There was no tsunami threat, the agency added. The US Geological Survey measured the quake at magnitude 5.7. The quake occurred in Shimane prefecture in northwestern Japan, impacting the cities of Matsue and Yasugi and nearby areas in Tottori prefecture.