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Mayor Eric Garcetti and his advisor, seismologist Lucy Jones, unveiled an earthquake plan for Los Angeles that requires wood-frame buildings built before 1980 with "soft" first stories — such as apartments with parking under the occupied units — to strengthen their structures within five years. These are the kinds of apartments that notoriously collapsed in the 1994 Northridge quake. The city's more threatening earthquake danger, “non-ductile reinforced concrete” buildings built prior to 1980, would have 25 years to retrofit, the mayor's office says. Political pressure from property owners has always worked to dampen City Hall's enthusiasm for ordering expensive retrofitting across the city. And once again, 25 years seems pretty generous, though the initial media coverage is calling this "the most ambitious seismic safety regulations in California history." An official of the Building Owners and Management Association of Greater Los Angeles and the head of the city's Department of Building and Safety endorsed the mayor's plan today.
The premise of the report is that "the most obvious threat from earthquakes is physical damage to vulnerable buildings. Soft story and concrete buildings built before the implementation of Los Angeles’ 1976 revision of the building code pose a significant risk to life in strong earthquake shaking."
From the mayor's report, which also looked at the water supply and communications:
The plan recommends significant investments in fortifying our city’s water supply, including developing an alternative water system for firefighting, protecting our aqueducts that cross the San Andreas Fault, increasing local water sources, and developing a network of resilient pipes.
The plan also calls for upgrades to our city’s telecommunications network to enable Internet and mobile connectivity after an earthquake, including creating partnerships with providers for shared broadband services after disasters, protecting power systems at fault crossings, creating a solar-powered citywide Wi-Fi network to avoid power disruptions, and fortifying cell phone towers."We acknowledge that we cannot prevent 100% of the losses in an earthquake. What we are trying to do is prevent the catastrophic collapse of our economy by addressing the biggest vulnerabilities," said Dr. Lucy Jones. "And if all of these recommendations are enacted, I believe that Los Angeles will not just survive the next large earthquake but we will be able to recover quickly and thrive."
Fun and informative additional quake facts: A USGS page on How to Construct Seven Paper Models that Describe Faulting of the Earth
LA Observed earthquakes page
Journalists' guide to reporting on earthquakes in SoCal
