As I wrote here last year, the best investment you can make to protect your home from an earthquake is to bolt it to the foundation. That'll prevent the biggest disaster, namely your house sliding off the foundation. (You can have a professional do it for less than $10,000, or you can do it yourself.) Another basic retrofit is to shore up your cripple walls - the walls between your foundation and the floor level - with plywood to create shear walls. Plywood is strong and flexible enough to help absorb shock.
But those external precautions only do part of the job, because the biggest dangers may be inside. Did you know that most earthquake injuries are caused by falling objects? If you have a home entertainment center, a kitchen hutch or a large bookcase, imagine it crashing over during a quake - and what would happen to anyone underneath it. You need to make sure those hulking pieces will stay upright by attaching them securely to the wall.
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Chances are your chandelier or other overhead fixture is up there just securely enough for daily use, but not well enough to keep it from crashing down during a shaker. Climb up and take the cover off the fixture and have a look for yourself. If you can jiggle it, that means it could fall. Run a long screw up through the ceiling plate and into a joist to give it extra staying power.
If you've got big pictures or mirrors on the wall, make sure they're not over the bed, your favorite chair or the kitchen table. No picture hook is foolproof enough to trust your life to it.
Do you keep lots of dishes on high shelves? An airborne dinner plate can do serious damage to anyone it hits. So can a cooking pot that takes wing from an overhead hook. Think about storing your heavy dishes, pots, pans and china in enclosed cabinets at lower altitudes, and then add latches to the cabinet doors to keep them from flying open.
If you're concerned about your fragile knick-knacks flying off the shelves, get yourself a jar of museum wax. As the name implies, it's the stuff that museums use to keep statues and other art pieces from falling. Apply it to the bottom of your precious vases and glass pieces and they're more likely to stay put.
Finally, make sure your water heater is securely strapped to the wall, and keep a wrench close by your main gas line so you can shut it off immediately in case of a leak. It's good earthquake insurance.
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Bruce Turner is president of TurnerBuilt, Inc. in Half Moon Bay. He can be reached at bturner@turnerbuilt.com
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