The Problem

We live in earthquake country. Washington is the third most seismically active state, behind Alaska and California and the Puget Sound is crisscrossed with a large number of serious fault lines. Plus, there are the Pacific and San Juan de Fuca plates pushing against each other with tremendous force off our coast. Finally, there are the other miscellaneous type quakes, like those of 2001. Experts are in agreement that one or more of these hazards could go off at any time - it is really "when" not "if".

 Scenario for a Magnitude 6.7 Earthquake on the Seattle Fault. Projected: 1,660 dead, 24,200 injured, 9,700 buildings destroyed, 29,000 buildings severely damaged and unsafe to occupy, 154,500 buildings moderately damaged with use restricted, 130 fires burning, All six major highways experience partial closures lasting months due to substantial damage, collapsed bridges. Utilities cut in areas with poor soils. Port facilities badly damaged, use restricted. Operations of businesses relying on "just-in-time" deliveries disrupted by collapsed supply warehouses, transportation closures, communication outages.

And What About Our Homes?

Most of our older houses were built with old growth fir and were constructed to last a long time. Plus, they have been through more than one earthquake and most are still standing. That is the good news, but there is another side to this situation. Most of these same homes are held in place largely by gravity. And, during a serious earthquake, gravity can get very iffy. As experts study the earthquakes in California and Japan, a serious trend showed up in the failures of houses. Over and over, the points of failure were between the foundation and the first floor. Where the wood structure contacted the foundation itself many houses jumped off the still solid foundation due to a lack of proper connections. Next, where there was a short pony or cripple wall, wall sections would domino over to cause the houses to crash into the side or front yard because those sections were not adequately braced. Finally, a number of houses actually broke loose at the floor level and just slid out of position. Obviously, any of these situations rendered the houses unusable without extensive and expensive repairs.

That is our problem.

Our homes built before roughly 1975, were not constructed to withstand that type of catastrophic quake. The City of Seattle estimates that almost a quarter of a million houses in greater Seattle are in need of seismic retrofitting. If we can get that done, we can cut those loss figures greatly. That is what Secure Retrofitting Company is all about.

Now, let's look at The Solution