BAY AREA QUAKE : Complaints Over Costly Preparation Crumble in the Quake

Some building owners grumbled and fumed, shoring up their buildings only after city inspectors forced them to take action. Some did it on their own, convinced that the big one would strike sooner or later.

Whatever their reasons, the few people who did prepare for the quake that every Northern Californian knew was coming are feeling a little bit smug now, and very thankful.

“Someone did something right, and it wasn’t me,” said Bill Shine, one of the grateful ones.

He shudders to think what would have become of his restaurant if San Francisco building inspectors had not forced him to comply with the codes.

“I hated it. Every time I turned around, some guy was saying, ‘Do something else.’ Every time I did something else, it cost me more money,” Shine said, detailing the work that inspectors required of him when he converted what had been his family home to a restaurant four years ago.

He estimated that he spent $40,000, possibly more, to meet earthquake requirements. A thick steel beam runs the length of his restaurant. Other steel beams connect to it. Walls are reinforced with plywood and double-thick wallboard.

The work delayed the opening of his Viareggio on Lombard Street in the Marina by six months.

Now, he is convinced that the braces, plywood and bolts saved the building and the people inside. Plaster fell in buildings near his restaurant. A few blocks away in the residential part of the Marina, houses collapsed.

At his building, however, not a single glass fell. He said he may even send a letter of thanks to the city for requiring that he comply with modern earthquake safety standards.

Most property owners are like Shine. Unless they are forced to, few will take such steps as strapping their water heaters to walls or bolting their buildings to foundations.

But one who overcame inertia in a big way was Carl Abbott, a Taoist minister who has spent much of his spare time over the past decade shoring up his home and five century-old row houses that his family owns near downtown Santa Cruz.

“I took it to be as inevitable as the sun coming up” that the earthquake was coming, Abbott said. Abbott’s row houses, which are listed on a national register of historic places, are three blocks from the Pacific Garden Mall, much of which collapsed.

His buildings survived, and he is convinced that they are intact because of the work he did. He replaced all of the foundations, shored up walls with plywood and removed the heavy layers of roofing that had been piled on over the years.

There is no question that the homes would have collapsed had he not done the work, he said.

“If I was naive, I would say I’m surprised that people didn’t do more. Everyone knew that an earthquake was absolutely inevitable. You could have bet on it,” Abbott said.

Many people who prepare for earthquakes on their own are contractors who know what can happen in an earthquake and know that certain precautions are relatively easy to take.

Building contractor Mario Salvetti stood outside his home in one of the hardest hit sections of the Marina, looking at damage to the homes of his neighbors. At a house across the street, bay windows shattered. Homes of some of his neighbors will have to be demolished.

Salvetti is not sure why his home survived. Perhaps his home is on firmer ground, he said. But when he remodeled a few years ago, he did add plywood to unreinforced walls and made sure his foundation was secure.

“I didn’t even think about it. It was just a part of the work,” Salvetti said.

Earthquake-prone California cities, San Francisco included, require that property owners meet modern earthquake standards when they remodel. Los Angeles requires owners of unreinforced masonry buildings to make repairs, regardless of whether they are remodeled.

San Francisco has been considering such an ordinance for “eight or nine years,” said Don Chan, an assistant superintendent in the San Francisco Building Department.

“In light of what just happened, I’m sure something is going to be passed,” Chan said.

Structural engineers and contractors who have been preaching the wisdom of preparedness now see the payoff. Peter Culley, a San Francisco engineer who has advised scores of building owners about ways of earthquake-proofing their older buildings, said he has received 30 calls from old clients.

“They’re about as pleased with us as a client can be,” Culley said.

At the same time, however, some building owners have seen the folly in their failure to act. Walls on a brick building south of Market Street in San Francisco collapsed, killing five people in a parking lot below. Culley had predicted that a major earthquake would result in a “dramatic failure” unless substantial earthquake-proofing was done on that building.

The cost of the work can be high in large commercial buildings. Bill Poland of Bay West Development Co., owner of a large warehouse made of brick that houses a San Francisco interior design center, estimated that he spent more than $4 million to make the cavernous building earthquake-proof.

During the 18-month renovation, he recalled, “tempers got short” and tenants complained about dust and noise. Now, however, he is convinced that the building would have failed had he not done the work.

“I couldn’t really live with myself knowing that I had not taken the precautions,” Poland said. “A lot of the tenants are my friends.”

David G. Plant of Plant Builders Inc. has been doing seismic bracing since 1972 and has a reputation as being among the best at his trade. Now, he believes business will get even better.

“Until now, I just had to tell people it was a good idea. Now I can show them,” Plant said.