Stucco repair costs in Reno

Western Reno had its own test in 2008. On April 25, after weeks of smaller quakes, a very shallow magnitude 5 earthquake struck under the Mogul and Somersett area. The Nevada Bureau of Mines and Geology says it was likely within a mile of the houses above it.

Most homes rode it out well. The bureau's report found the rocking cracked paint and plaster along drywall seams, at wall and ceiling corners, and diagonally up from doors. In a few homes the outside stucco cracked. Moving garages popped stones off decorative rock veneer, and in two houses a garage wall slid about an inch on its sill.

There was no systematic inspection of homes afterward. City and county building inspectors got about five calls. So nobody has a list of which stucco walls in Mogul and Somersett cracked that spring, and a hairline crack there may be older than it looks. Reno builds fast, too. Four in ten homes in the city went up in 2000 or later, Census estimates show.

It wasn't the first time. In December 1948 a magnitude 6 quake near Verdi damaged about 75 houses, the bureau's history notes, and its foreshocks cracked wall plaster in Reno.