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By GARRETT ANDREWS

DJC Oregon

Photos by Sam Tenney/Portland Daily Journal of Commerce [enlarge] Federico Flores, a mason with Kingsman Contracting, levels a windowsill on the Overland Warehouse project in Old Town/Chinatown.

Western Oregon is a geologic hot spot. Even though the region hasn't been rocked by a major quake in the modern era, experts agree there's a serious chance one will hit in our lifetimes. Among the hazards of a large seismic event is the failure of buildings made of unreinforced masonry (URM) – brittle brick buildings of a kind demonstrated to have a high likelihood of failure in a seismic event.





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