Minutes ago we here in Lawrenceville, New Jersey felt the earth shake…literally. An earthquake measured at 5.9 on the Richter scale, centered in Mineral, Virginia (just outside of Richmond), was felt along significant parts of the East Coast. 

Developers, property owners, architects, engineers and frankly all of us are to be thankful for building code requirements that consider earthquakes as an element of structural design, not only here in New Jersey, but throughout the entire nation. 

While structural design and building codes in California for instance must pay far more attention to the possibility and severity of earthquakes, all building codes are required to consider the impact of natural events (including wind and earthquakes) no matter how uncommon such natural events might be. Without such building code requirements, there could have been far more damage than the building shaking and buzz around the office we felt here in New Jersey.