While earthquakes kill tens of thousands in Iran, America takes steps to limit the damage caused by quakes not just by clever building, but by damage mitigation in the ground itself:
In a magnitude 8 temblor, streets in the red could be rendered quicksand by liquefaction as the quake briefly scrambled saturated soils. Buildings could come crashing down.
San Bernardino is trying to head off the peril. Tincher drove from his office to a shopping center. In the parking lot, behind a barbed wire-tipped fence, a pump as big as a pickup truck was pulling water from the ground and sending it through pipes and storm drains to the Santa Ana River.
The pump and others like it are lowering the water table to keep San Bernardino on solid moorings (Orange County is buying the excess water).
The city is halfway toward its quake-ready goal of siphoning out 25,000 acre-feet of water annually, the amount used by 50,000 households.
“It’s kind of a unique problem,” Tincher said.
Not so unique it doesn’t have application world-wide, mullahs permitting.