When disasters like these strike in U.S. cities, I always think of the
amazing structural, civil, and material engineers whose unsung work keeps
building and safety codes as rigid as they are. Nature certainly can and
does defeat them, but more rarely here than in other nations where less
stringent code or more corrupt adherence to code are the rule. As reluctant
as I am to admit it, one reason our own disasters are more survivable than
similar events in other places is the horrible overbearing threat of the
civil-litigation-shark-frenzy that would follow these events, were it not
for the good work of these building and safety engineers. While we could
certainly do with less litigation, we could not do with less from these
silently heroic engineers.

Bob