This is kind-of interesting - I've been looking at the damage in the plaster, and we might have been close to losing an outer, but not load-bearing wall. The b

This is kind-of interesting - I've been looking at the damage in the plaster, and we might have been close to losing an outer, but not load-bearing wall. The building we live in appears to have a "frame" that you can make out by noticing thicker areas in walls; and a central "core". Most of the rest is not load-bearing. So walls are, in a sense, like sheets that join to the frame top and bottom. In the kitchen we have a wall with a thin slit-like window across almost all of the top, and which ends at a corner. I'm not explaining this very well, but perhaps you understand that this wall is only connected to the structural frame at the bottom (the windows at the top separate it from the upper frame). Anyway, it appears to have moved significantly - there are large cracks at either end. :o( [edit] Bloody hell - and from outside there are major cracks.... Same on each floor. Although - not sure if this is good news or not - it appears from old repairs (that I had not noticed before...) that the same thing had happened in the 1985 quake (the building is from the 60s).