SAN JOSE, Calif. — The scenes of tilted, crumbled and collapsed concrete buildings after powerful earthquakes jolted Turkey and Syria last month are sobering. In Turkey alone, the shaking wrecked some 185,000 buildings, and the death toll in both countries has topped 48,000 people.
Could the Bay Area’s concrete buildings suffer a similar fate when The Big One strikes?
Fortunately, experts say California wouldn’t see the level of devastation like that in Turkey and Syria. But there is a danger, and experts say some buildings erected before 1980 using inflexible or “nonductile” concrete construction will fall. The trick is figuring out which ones — and what to do about them — before it’s too late.
