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>But you can have have stricter building code to help minimize the destruction. I believe such building guide lines are in place in areas like Los Angeles and San Fran.

Back home we were the fourth seismic zone, which meant we may get something like a 5 Richter once a decade - in reality nothing really shattering happened, we'd just get about 3 Richter when a 6-7 hit a place within 300 mile radius, just a few cracks in the walls of older buildings. Nevertheless we had a strict building code; I know I had to put a full cage of reinforced concrete at all corners of our house (foundation 1 meter high, half of it underground; corner pillars, square around the ceiling, all reinforced with four bars of 13mm iron). It cost me a lot, but I just felt that these regulations were in place for a reason, and I slept much better knowing that we did it right.