On July 28, 1976, at 3:42 AM, an earthquake of magnitude 7.8 occurred in Tangshan in the northeastern part of China. In a matter of seconds, an industrial city of a million people was reduced to rubble, with more than 240,000 people killed (6). Recent accelerated urbanization in other seismically active parts of the world whose population densities reach 20,000 to 60,000 inhabitants per square kilometer underscores the vulnerability of such areas to similar catastrophic numbers of earthquake-related deaths and injuries. In just the past 10 years, the world has witnessed four catastrophic earthquakes resulting in great loss of life: in Mexico City in 1985 (10,000 deaths); in Armenia in 1988 (25,000 deaths); in Iran in 1990 (40,000 deaths); and in India in 1993 (10,000 deaths) (Table 8--1).