Emily Guglielmo, who chairs the seismic committee of the engineering society, which is responsible for regulating standards for new structures, pointed out that numerous state and local jurisdictions are responsible for developing construction rules and deciding which standards to accept for their own regions.
It was Guglielmo who stated that there are a great many different models. On the other hand, it is reasonable to assert that a larger city is more advanced and better prepared to accommodate changes to the code than a smaller jurisdiction.
According to Guglielmo, such requirements are not based on the magnitude of the earthquake, but rather on the "probabilities of collapse." This evaluation varies depending on the seismic-risk factors of the location, and it is an attempt to develop safety standards that are uniform across the country.
"Obviously, the ground motions, the seismic risk, is higher in California than it is in New York, and as a result, we are going to design for a higher force in California than we would in New York," she added.
A professor of geophysics at Stanford University named Paul Segall stated that earthquakes on the East Coast tend to be felt far more extensively than those on the West Coast, despite the fact that they are normally less frequent and smaller than those on the West Coast.
According to him, this is due to the fact that the rock beneath the Earth's surface on the East Coast, which is colder and older, is less absorbent than the rock that is warmer in the West.
According to Segall, the 5.8-magnitude earthquake that occurred in Mineral Springs, Virginia, in 2011 "was probably felt by more people than any other earthquake in the history of the United States."
California and the Pacific Northwest, the general risk is far lower in that region; nonetheless, it is not completely absent. In general, New York City and other cities along the East Coast have a large number of older buildings made of stone and brick that "perform poorly in seismic shaking," according to Segall.
New York's building laws, on the other hand, do not often require older homes and buildings to be converted to modern seismic standards, in contrast to many jurisdictions in earthquake-prone California that do so. When the codes were first implemented in 1995, the majority of the city's housing stock had already been constructed.
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