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How
do you fight an eathquake, anyway?
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Heh, fight the earthquake. That's funny.
You can't fight an earthquake, you can only prepare your buildings and infrastructure to minimize damage; ie. buildings that flex (frame connectors and wired together concrete masonry blocks), gas, water and power lines that shut off when broken, LOTS of redundant safeties (valves, switches etc.).
Very stringent building codes are the number one lifesaver in earthquake areas. A couple years ago there was a little rumbler (to an Alaskan or Californian) in Iran that killed something like 11,000 people. On the news you would see bodies being pulled out of piles of CMU (concrete blocks). The quake hits, breaks apart the cheap mortar, and all these block buildings come tumbling down.
In the 7.9 quake I had a link for earlier, damage was mostly minimal. There were some liquor store owners sobbing, but the most serious injury was a 70+ year old granny who sprained her shoulder sprinting from her cabin. The Trans-Alaskan pipeline, which runs right over the faultline, jumped around like a garden hose and busted a bunch of supports, but it held together.
Sometimes, though, Mother Nature just opens a can of whoop-[censored] on you.
http://neic.usgs.gov/neis/eq_depot/usa/1964_03_28.html
http://www.vibrationdata.com/earthquakes/alaska.htm
And all you can do is hang on and pray.
