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Efforts to protect historic Seattle buildings from possible earthquakes decades away

There's an 85% chance that a damaging earthquake could hit Seattle in the next 50 years. Old brick buildings are most at risk, but retrofitting them could mean a loss of affordable housing.

Copyright 2025 NPR

Joshua “took the long way” to radio, working in architecture firms for over a decade before pursuing his passion for public radio and writing in 2007. By "long way," he means he's also been a writer, bicycle courier, commercial fisherman, bed-and-breakfast cook, carpenter, landscaper, and stained glass salesman. He’s detailed animal enclosures to prevent jaguars from escaping the Miami Zoo. Once, while managing a construction site in Athens, Greece, he was given a noogie by an Albanian civil war refugee in his employ. “You do not tell those guys how to place stucco,” he said. All of which has no doubt made him the story-teller he is today.