LOS ANGELES — As seismic engineers study the earthquakes in Turkey and Syria that killed more than 20,000 people this week, it's becoming clear that a significant cause of the destruction involved a building design common in California and other parts of the U.S.
The flaws of non-ductile concrete construction are found across the Golden State, with many buildings having not been evaluated or retrofitted and at risk of collapse in a serious earthquake.
It can be tempting for Californians to assume that their structures are inherently better than those in Turkey. But the state hasn't been tested with a magnitude 7.8 earthquake in more than a century. And that event — the great 1906 earthquake — destroyed much of San Francisco.
