The latest in plywood-reinforced walls, tied-down foundations, strengthened concrete and stronger welds - if an earthquake had to hit somewhere in densely populated Southern California, this relatively new suburb of 80,000 people was about the best place possible.
Chino Hills was just a few miles from the epicenter of Tuesday's magnitude-5.4 quake, yet it withstood the shaking with almost no damage at all, even while other communities farther away saw fallen bricks, cracked walls and windows, warped door frames and broken water mains and gas lines.
One big reason: Chino Hills went up mostly in the 1990s and was built to the stringent earthquake standards that the state wants to see adopted everywhere across California before the Big One strikes.
Read the story Associated Press | Posted July 30, 2008
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