The World - News from Jan. 18, 1989

A major earthquake will strike Israel in the next 50 years and cause widespread destruction because construction codes are not properly enforced, scientists say. The government has ignored such warnings for years, according to the scientists, and only began to take action after the earthquake in Soviet Armenia last month that killed about 25,000 people. “I started talking about this in 1979 and nobody paid any attention,” said Yaacov Glick, a civil engineering professor in Haifa and co-author of Israel’s construction codes. Israel and the occupied West Bank are situated on two faults.