One thing that last month’s earthquake demonstrated – as earthquakes in Humboldt tend to do, every decade or so – is the importance of retrofitting the beautiful old buildings that make up the bulk of the county’s housing stock. When the big ones strike, they invariably knock some old buildings off their foundations.
The Dec. 20 earthquake was the most destructive in quite a while. It made 69 buildings in Rio Dell at least temporarily uninhabitable. Most of them had old, unimproved foundations.
January 25, 2023