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Fortify Your Home Against Earthquakes: Building Stronger and Safer Homes

If you live in an older home, there are steps you can take to strengthen it. Our resources are here to help you evaluate your home’s resilience and safeguard against earthquakes and other natural disasters.

Discover Retrofit Products

Strengthen Your Home Against Disaster: Find the Perfect Solution Today!

When it comes to resilience during a major earthquake, some homes perform better than others. This largely has to do with when a structure was built — more specifically due to the building standards at the time of its construction. Homes built before 1985, for example, and particularly those built on raised foundations, can be especially susceptible to earthquake damage.

Fortunately, advances in structural engineering, lessons learned from past earthquakes and scientific research have paved the way for construction techniques that better equip homes to withstand a seismic event. And local and regional building codes now require all new houses in seismically vulnerable regions to meet higher construction and safety standards.

Earthquake Preparation and Safety

Seismic Retrofit Guide

A seismic retrofit guide for homes with raised foundations. This guide helps homeowners understand how to inspect, evaluate and perform basic retrofit construction using Simpson Strong-Tie products.

Seismic Retrofit Detail Sheet

This 24x36 plan set calls out the specific retrofit solutions for reinforcing a home's cripple wall and foundation connection. (Based on the 2021 International Existing Building Code.)