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Now here's today's news, discerned differently.

Today is July 11, 2019.

Let's talk about who we are when no one is looking.

If a structural engineer in Southern California is right, half a million people in his state

are living in buildings that are likely to collapse if an earthquake strikes.

Called soft story structures, they are apartment buildings with a

parking lot underneath. They were a popular way to combine housing and parking in California's

post-war boom. But the posts that carry the building's weight were often designed to maximize

parking space, not to withstand the side-to-side shifting of an earthquake. A powerful tremble can collapse these posts and the structures they support.

Some owners are taking steps to retrofit their buildings, but many more properties are at risk.

Soft-story buildings are a metaphor for our times.

There is peril in our world that cannot be seen on the surface.

All seems fine today, but when a crisis strikes tomorrow, the hidden danger becomes all too

apparent and devastating.

Crisis reveals character. Consider two examples. A man ran into a burning building in Aberdeen, Washington

last Thursday to save his eight-year-old niece. When a fire broke out in their home,

he rushed inside, grabbed her, and took his shirt off to wrap around her face so she would not inhale smoke.

Derek Bird, age 20, is recovering in a Seattle hospital from burns and his face,

neck, arms, and back. He said, I don't care if I was burning. I just wanted to make sure I got her

out. On the other side of the world, you may not remember Felipeo Magnini, the Italian swimmer

...