Mexico quake was California’s wake-up call
Socal cities big and small are working toward often-overdue seismic upgrades
LOS ANGELES – A number of cities big and small in Southern California are taking steps to identify seismically vulnerable buildings for the first time in a generation, acting in part on the devastating images of earthquake damage in Mexico and elsewhere around the world.
“What happened last year in Mexico City, we don’t want to experience in California,” David Khorram, Long Beach’s superintendent of building and safety, said of the quake that left more than 360 people dead. “We want to be progressive.”
In hopes of mitigating the loss of life from a major quake that experts say is inevitable, Long Beach is discussing spending up to $1 million to identify as many as 5,000 potentially vulnerable buildings.
Moorpark already has agreed to spend as much as $10,000 for its own survey of at-risk buildings.
Malibu is taking stock of its structures, including those with flimsy first stories – such as apartments with skinny columns holding up carport parking on the ground floor, known as “soft-story buildings.” Officials in Ventura and Hermosa Beach are doing the same.
As more cities consider seismic retrofit laws – to protect both lives and the region’s limited housing supply – many owner and tenant groups in the Los Angeles area generally agree that earthquake strengthening should be done. But there is some concern about the cost of the upgrades and who will pay for them.
Beverly Kenworthy, vice president of the California Apartment Association’s Los Angeles division, said tenant safety is “a no-brainer.” Daniel Yukelson, executive director of the Apartment Association of Greater Los Angeles, said vulnerable buildings need to be retrofitted, but added, “There’s gotta be a way to help the property owners do that.”
Most retrofits for softstory wood-frame apartment buildings cost $40,000 to $160,000. Upgrades to larger concrete-and-steel buildings can vary from $50 to $100 a square foot. Amid a strong real estate market, rising property values are giving owners more incentive to protect their investments.
Owner and tenant groups have been calling for more government grants or low-interest loans to help fund retrofits. On March 28, the Los Angeles City Council voted to study a new seismic retrofit loan program using money from sources such as a city affordablehousing trust fund.
“Not all building owners can afford to go into the market and get a building loan,” said Martha Cox-nitikman, vice president for public policy for the Building Owners and Managers Association’s Greater Los Angeles chapter.
Some, however, say that apartments are a lucrative business and that paying for a seismic retrofit makes sense for long-term owners.
“If you look at the cost of the retrofit versus the value of the building, the mathematics are really easy. We have significant investments in these properties, and we intend to protect them,” said Michael Cusumano, managing director of Burbankbased Cusumano Real Estate Group, who backs mandatory retrofit laws.
Some worry renters could end up footing the bills.
“At a minimum, there has to be some shared costs,” said Larry Gross, executive director of the Coalition for Economic Survival, a tenant advocacy group. In cities without rent control, Gross said, increases to cover the cost of retrofitting could be beyond some renters’ means.
Dan Faller, president of the Apartment Owners Assn. of California, is among those who oppose mandatory retrofits as unnecessary government intrusion. Still, he said, the possibility of legal action if someone is injured in an earthquake means “it would behoove most apartment owners to get the job done as soon as possible.”
Part of the reason for the change in discourse around city halls was Los Angeles’ landmark 2015 law enacting the nation’s most sweeping seismic regulations – covering an estimated 15,000 apartment and concrete buildings. Santa Monica and West Hollywood followed suit last year and added steel-frame buildings to their retrofit lists.
Another factor has been the entry of the Southern California Assn. of Governments in boosting talk of earthquake safety. The group hired seismologist Lucy Jones, instrumental in crafting L.A.’S law, as a consultant, dispatching her to offer presentations to a number of cities interested in doing more on earthquake safety.
Moorpark Assistant City Manager Deborah Traffenstedt said Jones’ Center for Science and Society helped link her city with others in the area. Officials now share information during monthly conference calls.
Among the most vulnerable structures in a quake – and those that can be the cheapest to retrofit – are the state’s stock of historic brick buildings.
Ventura, for instance, “is one of those few historic downtowns on the coast, and we want to preserve that. That’s part of what makes Ventura special,” said Jeffrey Lambert, the city’s community development director, adding that months of paralysis after an earthquake would bring “a pretty devastating impact to us.”
An existing city law mandates only that brick buildings be retrofitted above the roof line, a minimal requirement that puts the rest of the structure at risk of collapse. Lambert said Ventura’s next step will be to establish a more comprehensive inventory of seismically vulnerable buildings and consider options that could require retrofit of brick and other buildings at risk of collapse.
In San Jose, a mandatory law on brick buildings led to more than 120 being retrofitted and more than a dozen demolished. Five old brick buildings remain, and all of those have been ordered vacated.
Martinez, a city in Contra Costa County, had long had only a voluntary law on brick buildings, but as of a decade ago there were still about 40 that hadn’t been retrofitted.
City leaders decided to pass a mandatory law, and by 2017 all had been retrofitted – without the city needing to pursue legal action.
“It’s an accomplishment,” said Dave Scola, Martinez’s public works director. “The council said they didn’t want to keep putting it off until people here were injured.”