Quote:
Originally Posted by Porsche-O-Phile
Can be, but it's all in the detailing. You can make masonry just as good as any other material in a seismic zone.
The reality is 99% of the "brick" you see today is just veneer anyway. But even if you go with honest-to-goodness load-bearing brick exterior walls, they can be tied back & reinforced to make them plenty strong in earthquakes.
You're probably thinking of unreinforced masonry such as is seen in third-world countries and used to be seen in very old structures (before seismic retrofits were required). Those are just basically piles of bricks w/ grout. Yes, very dangerous when the ground starts moving.
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I simply said that we don't have brick houses in CA. No reason for that, I know.
BTW, if there weren't exceptions, there wouldn't be rules.