Wood–frame houses withstand earthquakes far better than masonry houses do, because wooden frames have some flexibilit...

Emil-Kunkin on December 23, 2022

Hi, we don't need to solve both sides of the puzzle. We know that generally, wood does better than stone, but in this one case the stone did better than the wood. We need to find a reason for this atypical result. That could be because the wood was unusually bad, the stone was unusually strong, or some other factor changed the dynamic (e.g. the earthquake caused fires, that burned down the wood home but not the stone one). We do not need to do all three, only alone is enough to explain why the wood was damaged but the stone was not. If the wood was already predisposed to damage, as C suggests, we have a reason to think that the wood house would be damaged in an earthquake that otherwise would not have damaged a healthy wood structure.