when he could start working on reinforcing/replacing the facade?
No.
But the next time I talked to my father, who was the actual owner of the building, I told him what the engineer had said. My father was very much a man of the world, very rooted in being a grown-up and taking care of business. He responded, "Well, you have a deadline now, don't you? The facade needs to be replaced before the next earthquake."
Did my father, being a man of the world, say, "Since we have absolutely no idea when the next earthquake will occur, please call that engineer first thing tomorrow morning and get started on this project"?
No. We dropped the subject. Perhaps one reason we both felt no urgency about replacing the facade was because the building had come through the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake unscathed.
In 2005, my father died. I was much less likely to take on a major project without him.
Then, April 18, 2006, arrived -- the 100th anniversary of the infamous 1906 earthquake. In honor of the occasion, the San Francisco Chronicle published in the Sunday edition an entire magazine describing what would happen NOW if an earthquake as strong as the one in '06 struck the city. The devastation would be unimaginable.
You see, the 1906 earthquake was SIXTEEN TIMES STRONGER than the 1989 earthquake. Sixteen times! For example, anyone standing at that moment in '06 was thrown to the ground. I was standing in 1989 and I was NOT thrown to the ground. I didn't know an earthquake was happening, so I thought I was having a stroke. But I did not fall.
It just so happens there is a seismograph in Gottingen, Germany that was operating in 1906 and was STILL operating in 1989. So we can see an actual visual comparison of the two quakes.
