[masraum]

Wow, very cool! I'm jealous of the travel.

I just saw a show on the Bay area. Apparently there are lots of places built with a "soft story" where the bottom floor has no diagonal bracing and is basically weak. When a quake hits, the bottom floor collapses. I would suspect that most places with a ground floor garage and a story or two of living space above that would be "soft story".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soft_story_building





Might want to check into that when you're moving in.