Three countries recently shaken by devastating earthquakes have some of the most advanced earthquake engineering and safety policies in the world, and they have some things to teach Californians

Montgomery, Ala., was slated to get a new, 28,000-square-foot Looking Good store, offering men's clothing and sportswear. The engineers at Larry Speaks and Associates joined the design team to create a stormwater system to detain runoff onsite and release it slowly into a municipal system, as required by the local regulations. However, as often happens in urban areas where land is at a premium, the 4.5-acre site did not have enough space to fit in both a detention pond and parking lot. So, the engineers took the only possible option — designing an underground stormwater system.