About the author  ⁄ Nicolas Luco, Ph.D.

Nicolas Luco is a Research Structural Engineer with the USGS in Golden, Colorado. Since 2004, he has served as a liaison between the USGS National Seismic Hazard Mapping Project and the BSSC Provisions Update Committee, among other building code committees. (nluco@usgs.gov)

The 1994 Northridge earthquake generated world-record ground motions. At the time, the horizontal peak ground acceleration of 1.8 g measured by a seismometer in Tarzana was the largest ever. The same is true of the peak ground velocity of 148 cm/s measured in Granada Hills. Both measurements were within approximately 15 km of the source of the earthquake; they were also near most of the damage described in other articles of this series.

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