Engineers at UC San Diego’s outdoor earthquake simulator are about to finish building a 10-story wooden tower that will undergo fierce shaking to explore how well tall timber structures can handle quakes and other natural disasters.

This is the tallest building ever placed on the Scripps Ranch shake table, which just underwent a $16.3 million upgrade that will enable researchers from around the world to more realistically simulate temblors.

The new project is led by the Colorado School of Mines, which will subject the tower to shaking equivalent to the magnitude 6.7 Northridge earthquake that struck the San Fernando Valley in Los Angeles County in 1994, killing 60 people. The testing will begin in February.

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