GENERALIZATIONS CONCERNING EARTHQUAKES 41 



EARTHQUAKE DAMAGE IS LARGELY 

 AVOIDABLE 



It is neither my intention nor desire to minimize the 

 dangers of earthquake disasters such as have taken 

 place in other parts of the world where conditions 

 of greater seismicity than here have prevailed, but 

 to whose severity those of California are in no ways 

 comparable, as cited by Daly. It can be truly said 

 that the great casualties of time past have been due 

 to conditions which could have been avoided by proper 

 structural and geological considerations. Thus it was 

 that the greater number of deaths at Tokio were from 

 the hurtling of the heavy roofing-tiles through the 

 air; at Messina from the fact that the walls were 

 composed of thick and poorly-cemented, rounded 

 boulders with unfastened joists. The property de- 

 struction at Santa Barbara resulted from poor con- 

 struction in general and from the fact of the location of 

 the city upon the site of an active fault line. 



There is no evidence in all the seismic history of 

 Southern California of a properly constructed build- 

 ing having been shaken down or wrecked by an earth- 

 quake. Even in the instances of the severe earthquakes 

 at San Jacinto, we are inforaied by one of the highest 

 class contractors of Class A buildings in Los Angeles 

 who visited the vicinity after its greatest quake in 

 1918, that only buildings of most inferior and deficient 

 construction were destroyed. A prominent architect of 

 this city in a recent lecture before a private club of dis- 

 tinguished membership, asserted that he believed that 

 not a single, well-constructed building was injured by 

 the Santa Barbara quake of 1925. 



