Oklahoma state officials set out a couple of years ago to find which buildings in the state were most vulnerable to earthquakes. Today, lawmakers are no closer to knowing which structures would be most likely to collapse, reports NewsOK.That’s because the team of experts the state hired never performed the work requested of them. The team balked out of fears they might be held liable should their predictions prove wrong.
Meanwhile, Oklahoma is experiencing unprecedented seismic activity, and seismologists say the odds of a large-scale quake are growing. More troubling is that some of the state's most vulnerable public buildings might also be some of the most important in the wake of a disaster. These include police and fire stations and city halls. Many public state buildings were built with unreinforced masonry, which is vulnerable to collapse.
In 2015, Oklahoma had more than 900 magnitude 3.0 or greater earthquakes.