15 Valley Cities Miss Deadline on Quake Rule : Safety: Municipalities ignored a state law to adopt earthquake measures and notify owners of unreinforced buildings to make their structures safe.

Less than half of the 29 cities in the San Gabriel Valley have met a state deadline for complying with an earthquake safety law to make unreinforced masonry buildings less hazardous.

The number, included in a report released last week by the state Seismic Safety Commission, reflects a 43% compliance rate statewide. The number would have been lower had people not been jolted into awareness by the Oct. 17 Bay Area earthquake, building experts said.

State law requires cities and counties in earthquake zones to notify owners of brick buildings constructed before 1933 that the structures may be unsafe. It also requires local governments to adopt safety measures.

The Unreinforced Masonry Building Act, as the 1986 law is called, had a Jan. 1, 1990, deadline.

Only 14 San Gabriel Valley cities have fully complied with the law. Four of those--Bradbury, Diamond Bar, Duarte and Walnut--have no unreinforced masonry buildings.

In some of the other 15 cities, officials cited a lack of building experts and a number of historical landmarks as reasons for their failure to comply. “The fact of the matter is we have not complied with the state requirement, like many cities in the San Gabriel Valley area,” said Robert Lopez, El Monte’s building official. “We haven’t had the manpower to go out and do the surveys required.” The city is short two building inspectors and has no building plan checkers, Lopez said.

Pomona, with about 100 unreinforced buildings, including the YMCA on South Garey Avenue, has not started notifying owners that their buildings may need to be reinforced. The city’s building department also is short-staffed, a supervisor said; last fall, the development director and the development services manager resigned.

“Due to staff changes and what’s been going on, the seismic thing hasn’t received the attention it ought to have received,” said Simon Shoo, Pomona’s plan check supervisor. “In general, we have kind of a skeleton here. We’re barely keeping up with the construction that’s going on.”

Nevertheless, seismic commission officials said the response from cities is better than expected. They say widespread structural damage from the 7.1 Bay Area temblor shook up government officials throughout California. As late as last July, 127 cities and counties, representing 34% of the population in earthquake zones, had not reported to the state. Now, that figure is down to 49 cities and counties, or 6% of the population.

Commission spokesman Ed Hensley warned that those figures may be misleading, because some cities may have adopted mandatory upgrading ordinances and informed all the owners some time ago and have forgotten to report to the state.

La Puente falls in that category. In La Puente, the City Council is using federal block grants to subsidize the costs of engineering studies for the city’s 23 unreinforced buildings, and will offer loans to owners to upgrade them.

Most cities with upgrading ordinances have adopted the city of Los Angeles’ Building Code, which sets a schedule for reinforcement according to the buildings’ occupancy levels. Theaters, community centers and restaurants, for example, would be given first priority.

Structural reinforcement of brick buildings is costly and time-consuming. It involves tying the ceiling and floor to the walls, anchoring the foundation to the walls, drilling holes through the masonry and inserting steel reinforcements. The process can cost as much as $20 per square foot, or $120,000 for the average 6,000-square-foot building.

Under Los Angeles’ code, an owner may demolish a building rather than pay repair costs, and the city will demolish buildings that are not upgraded by variable deadlines, depending on occupancy level.

Even if all 366 cities and counties covered by the state law eventually comply, seismic experts warned that several classes of older buildings will still pose significant earthquake hazards: pre-1970 concrete structures, some public schools and state-owned buildings, which aren’t included in the law.

“Non-ductile” concrete frame buildings with columns and boxy upper floors, such as the Keith Spalding Building on the Caltech campus in Pasadena, are especially vulnerable to damage from ground shaking, said Wilfred Iwan, a Caltech earthquake engineering professor on the Seismic Safety Commission’s executive committee.

“This is one of the hot issues right now,” Iwan said. Although Caltech is reinforcing the building, he said, there are similar buildings on campuses across the state. “Anything built in the ‘60s and earlier would be suspicious. These were built before the concept of ductility, before the ability of something to stretch without breaking.”

QUAKE COMPLIANCE Status of cities’ compliance with law requiring upgrading of unreinforced masonry buildings.

No Compliance

El Monte--Hasn’t completed survey; doesn’t require upgrade of unreinforced masonry buildings. 20 to 25 buildings.

Report Not Filed by

Jan. 1 Deadline

La Puente--Completed survey of 23 buildings; requires upgrading.

Rosemead--Completed survey of five buildings; requires upgrading.

San Dimas--Completed survey of eight buildings; expected to adopt upgrading ordinance in April.

San Gabriel--Completed survey of 63 buildings; requires upgrading.

South El Monte--No buildings.

Temple City--Completed survey of four buildings; requires upgrading.

Reported; No Full Compliance

Arcadia--20 buildings.

Claremont--66 buildings.

Covina--71 buildings.

Glendora--No information available.

Industry--No information available.

Monrovia--76 buildings.

Pasadena--About 680 buildings.

Pomona--About 100 buildings.