True Story:
I'm based out of the SE (Carolinas) and my firm had recently finished construction of a large (for this area) 15 story tower for a client in NC. Well, this EQ hits Mineral, VA and our client is suddenly very aware that Earthquakes do, in fact, happen (who knew right?). Anyway, for the past two weeks I've been doing some THA stuff and comparing the Mineral, VA EQ to essentially it's equivalent EQ in NC.
Results? I was actually surprised to find there are some parts of the design response spectrum [ASCE 7-05] that were exceeded by the Mineral, VA EQ. We saw peaks exceed the spectrum for a natural period of .6-.8 seconds and again at 1.1 to 1.3 seconds, the later being much less pronounced(Our data was obtained from the CERI center out of Memphis).
With the realization that more people than just Engineers sit on the Building Codes, anyone got the over/under on the Seismic requirements on the East Coast increasing in the next few code cycles? I know which way I'm betting.
-HF