Posted on 09/24/2017 5:49:17 AM PDT by BenLurkin
Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti said the significant destruction and death toll from Tuesday’s earthquake in Mexico should prompt owners and local governments across California to get more buildings retrofitted to withstand quakes as soon as possible.
A viral video capturing the collapse of a five-story concrete building — remarkable for the detail it shows of how such structures behave in an actual quake — has become a startling and visceral illustration for how seemingly solid buildings can become brittle and crumble when shaken side to side.
...
Structural engineers in California say it’s clear that brittle concrete buildings were a major reason for many of the deaths caused by Tuesday’s magnitude 7.1 quake in central Mexico. Only a few local governments around the world have required that brittle concrete buildings be retrofitted, and Los Angeles was one of the first to do so in 2015.
Garcetti proposed the retrofit law, requiring that concrete buildings and wooden apartment buildings with flimsy ground floors be retrofitted by a certain deadline.
Requiring concrete buildings to be retrofitted was at one time controversial in Los Angeles, given the expense, which can exceed $1 million for a large structure. L.A.’s seismic safety law permitted a lengthy deadline — 25 years to retrofit a concrete building once the city issues an order requiring the building be seismically evaluated for risk of collapse.
(The deadline for wooden apartment buildings is shorter — seven years after an order is given.)
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
Kind of like what happened to the Capitol Records building in 1975’s “Earthquake”, eh?
This should have been started about 1970.
It’s amazing — and a damning comment on LA governments — that
this was NOT done decades ago.
I laugh at this as the left coast will get a major earthquake about every 50 to 75 years. The southeast gets a hurricane, or three, every year.
I was born in California and lived there for most of my life considering my assignments to Mather and Beale after two years in Florida. So I’ve had a little experience in both natural disasters.
But, here’s an interesting thought. According to the California Department of Conservation, there are hundreds of identified faults in California. About 200 are considered potentially hazardous based on their slip rates in recent geological time (the last 10,000 years). More than 70 percent of the state’s population resides within 30 miles of a fault where high ground shaking could occur anytime in the next 50 years.
If a person can sue McDonalds for a million over spilling a cup of coffee, that the restaurant displayed as hot, then why can’t a home buyer sue a real estate agent for not warning them of the potential hazard of a destructive earthquake? Same thing. If the coffee drinker can’t be held responsible, how can the home owner. And as there is no statutes of limitation on this, they could do it in 50 years.
Of course, they can always say natural disaster. But that won’t hold up as a case in New Jersey had a man suing the city for his slipping on a wet manhole cover after a rain. They claimed natural disaster. So the guy petitioned 13 churches in the area and sued God. He won. So God is not above guilt, I guess. That’s what the courts say. So for those of you wishing to go into the business of suing, the manhole covers are under the wingspan of the California State Public Utilities Commission. Have one on me in Tahiti.
And all they have to do is go to the 9th circuit court in San Francisco and those liberal phallic symbols will give them anything. They always do.
rwood
Maybe building tall building on top of an earthquake fault line was not such a good idea after all.
How does one retro fit a concrete structure
Oh, goody! Trying to repair the barn after the horse has fled.....and where is Garcetti going to get the money for this??? We left California 8 years ago. We love to visit as we always enjoyed the activities that were available. But now we are no longer cash poor 24/7. (And we made reasonable salaries when we lived there)
Hey Eric!
You gonna tax L.A. residents some more or are you gonna tell voters that Kansas and Texas have some responsibility to bail you out?
You wanna live there?
YOU fix it!
Well since Moonbeam is so set on making the whole state a "Sanctuary State", he might have some problems prying the dough out of Trump.
Probably going to have to pass the hat around the illegal community.
That oughta do it.
That top heavy, POS building would have collapsed if a Cooper Mini bumped into it. Its foundation and upper support lines were way outta whack!
I left tornados in KS for life in CA with earthquakes. I won’t and don’t live in places like LA for fear of post eq conditions being surrounded by 13 million of my closest friends.
Some have a full steel beam structure built on the outside.
Saw article where an old historic brick firehouse was saved from demolition when they sprayed (pickup truck) bed liner on the inside of the brick. Some wood structures are re-beamed inside along with wire cable.
I just paid $11,000 to bolt my 1913 Craftsman house in Los Angeles.
With YT leaving Cali in droves, where's the money going to come from?
At some point it’s less expense to knock down and start fresh. Some owners probably are rooting for the earthquake, depending upon Gov. and any insurance payout.
Cities in the Pacific Northwest didn’t have any clue about earthquake issues until last two decades. No quakes for hundreds of years, because their fault is a true silent killer. Does anyone know details of Seattle’s plan for structures? Does Seattle take the potential 9.0 earthquake issue and give it any serious consideration?
Money well spent, IMO.
Great idea; 50 years ago.
How do they, a city and state that can’t afford to pay their pension obligations, intend to pay for all this?
LA has known that the “big one” is only a matter of time. Hell,they even made multiple movies about it. An epic quake will topple buildings like dominos and flood the coast killing,maiming and trapping millions. I would never live there.
Actually, we need to make sure the areas offshore are smooth and if necessary, paved, in order to usher into L.A. and SF the next major tsunami.
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