Thank heaven for building codes!

If you want to build something unusual like a geodesic dome they can be a pain in the ass, but building codes have saved a lot of lives, possibly yours and mine. Remember hearing about the earthquake that hit Romania 15 or 20 years ago? It killed about ten thousand people. It was exactly the same magnitude as the one that hit San Francisco in '89: a 7.9 on the Richter scale, if I remember correctly. And yet that one (in SFO) killed only about 50 people. Why the difference? U.S. building standards won't allow folks to build shoddy unreinforced heavy concrete structures that fall down around your ears at the slightest tremor; and the same obviously must be true of Canada. Otherwise your morning might have been considerably worse. A few years ago a relatively minor quake in southern California caused a two-story apartment complex to collapse. The people in the upper floor were more or less O.K.; the hundreds of people downstairs were killed. That's what can happen when enforcement gets lax and construction shoddy. I actually do want to build a geodesic dome, and other even more idiosyncratic structures, so I'll udoubtedly wind up cursing the protectionist building industry and its codes; but since I live in an earthquake zone, I might be dead without them. I'm glad your house is sound and you woke up to a relatively pleasant day. Didn't even break your web connection! Take care. Anacreon (The subject of this painting is not me.)