Tall crawl-space walls also are known as cripple walls. Most Victorians have cripple walls, and often are damaged in quakes. Even in some of the minor quakes of recent years, such homes have been destroyed when these walls collapsed. Unreinforced cripple walls are among the cheapest and simplest seismic problems to repair. Simply nailing a dozen sheets of plywood reinforcement to the inside face of the cripple-wall studs can save a house from destruction in a quake.
Many houses predating World War II , with rudimentary anchor bolts or none at all, are a worry.
Ground motion can send such houses sliding off their foundations. That's a pretty good argument for adding some more anchor bolts. Unreinforced garages with second stories above are another likely candidate for trouble. If the narrow sections of wall on either side of the garage door aren't properly reinforced, the result can be severe structural damage or even colla pse. The problem is magnified when there's a second story above the garage.