Have you ever stopped to think about how much time you spend in a building? You probably spend your day inside your home, school, or office and then stop by the coffee shop, grocery store, or mall. There is a statistic from the Environmental Protection Agency that estimates most people spend close to 90% of their lives inside a building. With all that time inside of a structure, how often do you stop and think about how safe that building is, especially if you live in an earthquake region? And what about the whole community of buildings, and how we would be able to continue living our lives if a big earthquake hit and we were able to survive . . . but had no buildings left that were safe to live or work in? This raises the question of how resilient we would be after an earthquake, how quickly we would be able to recover and resume normal lives after a catastrophic earthquake. For many cities around the world who have suffered through large earthquakes and hurricanes, the answer has been not very quickly at all, with some affected cities estimated as taking as long as 50–100 years truly to recover. We know a big earthquake is coming to Southern California, so what can we do? At Simpson Strong-Tie, we are helping lead the research and innovation to make sure buildings and communities can stay safe in the next earthquake.
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