In California, high-rise safety rests largely on owners
A re-inspection effort for aging towers might be prudent in the Golden State. Who would pay?
Despite the tendency of the Earth to convulse beneath them, some 20,000 buildings that are 14 stories tall or higher have sprouted in California, according to international data.
They’re office buildings and residential towers. They’re in Long Beach and Los Angeles, Irvine and Oakland, San Jose and San Francisco, Glendale and Riverside.
Some of the oldest have towered majestically over the landscape for 100 years, surviving earthquakes, weather and time. But what’s happening below?
In California, no government agency is required to probe the bones of aging highrises to ensure they’re safe. Once a local city or county issues a certificate of occupancy — the final step in the building process, meaning people can move in — the government’s work is essentially done. It’s left to building owners and residents to ensure high-rises are structurally sound as the years go by, which can lead to conflict. Residents have balked at hefty special assess
ments — sometimes hitting $100,000 per unit — that have been required to shore up aging infrastructure.
Here, California’s reputation as a hyper-regulator is grounded in myth, not fact.
Florida’s two largest counties are far stricter, mandating that aging high-rises be inspected at age 40, then every 10 years thereafter. Of course, re-inspection requirements don’t guarantee safety: Years after warnings about cracks and leaking in its garage, Champlain Towers South crumbled to dust in the night, killing some 140 people as they slept on June 24. The homeowners association knew there were problems for years but couldn’t corral a consensus to do much about it.
As California’s high-rise dwellers gaze out floor-toceiling windows and highrise workers head back to the office, many are wondering: Would a Floridastyle re-inspection regimen for aging towers be prudent in the Golden State?
‘Such a rare occurrence’
Engineers note that California has some of the strictest building requirements in the nation, thanks to its perch atop so many earthquake fault lines. But there’s always room for improvement.
“Failures like the one in Miami are such a rare occurrence,” said Henry M. Koffman, professor of civil and environmental engineering at USC’s Viterbi School of Engineering.
“Should we have inspections? Yeah, we should have inspections. You might find one out of a million cases in the U.S. — but that one out a million may save lives. It’s a balancing act, a trade-off. There are thousands and thousands of structures — to go around and inspect all of them takes an army. Who’s going to pay for it?”
A decade ago, Koffman was summoned by a homeowners association to inspect an aging high-rise in the L.A. neighborhood of Westwood. It had problems similar to Champlain Towers South: A swimming pool over a two-level garage, showing structural cracks.
It needed more than $10 million in repairs. Residents balked but eventually agreed to a pricey special assessment. He only wishes Champlain South could have had a similar outcome.
“When I first saw the pictures, it looked like a bomb blast. Oklahoma City. Domestic or international terrorism,” he said.
Bay Area high-rises
The Bay Area is home to hundreds of high-rise buildings, some dating back to the early 1900s. But building experts in the area said the age — and lack of re-inspections — is not cause for concern.
San Francisco alone is home to nearly 500 highrises, according to emporis. com, a database for building information worldwide, with some residential condos, such as Bellaire Tower, which was built in 1930. In Oakland, the BellevueStaten, a residential condo with a view of Lake Merritt, has become one of the city’s famous buildings since its construction in 1929.
Chu Chang, the chief building official of San Jose, said it doesn’t make much sense for the government to re-inspect aging condos. He worried that such a measure could even do more harm than good if residents felt complacent about fixing problems with the knowledge that an inspection would take place a few years down the line.
“If you live in a singlefamily home and there’s water coming down from your ceiling, you do something because you own the house,” he said. “You don’t sit there waiting for the government to come in for recertification. You don’t add another level of government bureaucracy if your roof is collapsing.”
Instead, San Jose focuses on regularly inspecting structures to ensure they’re meeting fire safety codes. The city also inspects buildings with renters and other residents who don’t own their living spaces to make sure that the structures are up to code. Those tenants, Chang said, are the ones most at risk since they don’t own the building. “That’s where you focus if you want to protect people,” he said.
Whose job is it?
California’s Building Code is a constant work in progress. Right now, updates to its many rules governing electrical, mechanical, plumbing, building and other codes are being drafted for adoption, which happens every three years.
There’s no statewide law or code requiring mandatory structural/engineering reviews after a certain time period for high-rises, and there are no proposals for one on the table right now, said Jennifer Iida, spokeswoman for the California Department of General Services.
“A post-occupancy inspection program generally is not a requirement in a building code,” she said by email.
After the collapse of a balcony killed six people in Berkeley in 2017, however, the state Legislature approved a new law requiring most multifamily buildings with exterior stairs and balconies to be regularly inspected.
The responsibility for reviewing building plans, issuing building permits and declaring structures safe and ready to occupy isn’t the state’s bailiwick — it’s the job of California’s 480-plus city and 58 county building and planning departments.
Those cities and counties could decide to adopt more stringent, Florida-style re-inspection programs for their older high-rises if they so choose.
“Enforcement does fall to the cities, although California has a state building code. Local municipalities can adopt amendments, and many do, but they must be at least as strict as the state requirement,” said Thomas A. Sabol, professor of civil and environmental engineering at UCLA’s Samueli School of Engineering, by email.
“Other than buildings subject to mandatory seismic upgrades — e.g., nonductile concrete buildings in L.A., West Hollywood, and Santa Monica, or tuckunder/soft-story apartments in these cities — there is little in the way of mandatory re-inspection once a certificate of occupancy has been issued.
“Based on my experience reviewing existing buildings, I haven’t seen many examples of significant structural damage or distress in the absence of an outside cause (e.g., an earthquake), but this doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. Most of the buildings that I think require remedial attention are those that have seismic deficiencies.”
Some local officials are spooked enough to start the ball rolling. Los Angeles County Supervisor Janice Hahn has proposed a plan to assess all the high-rises in unincorporated L.A. County, which will be discussed at this week’s Board of Supervisors meeting.
Koffman of USC has been examining video of the Champlain Towers collapse, and of the condition of the garage beforehand. He suspects well-documented problems with water intrusion and the pool deck will ultimately emerge as the culprits in its collapse. He also expects the tragedy to spark robust discussion, thorough examination and, likely, change.
“Whenever there’s an incident like this, we learn from it,” he said.