VENTURA : Quake-Proofing of Buildings Required

The Ventura City Council has passed an ordinance requiring downtown landlords to make parts of their unreinforced masonry buildings earthquake-proof after a woman testified that her son was killed by tumbling bricks in the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake.

The council voted 6 to 1 to require owners of 138 such buildings to anchor tile roofs and brick parapets to make them more resistant to quakes, and to require all landlords to coat windows larger than three feet square with shatterproof glazing.

The vote followed a tearful speech by Jeanne La Fever of Oxnard, who said a San Francisco warehouse’s unanchored brick parapet toppled onto the street, crushing her 22-year-old son, Derek Van Alstyne. An anchored brick parapet across the street remained intact, she said.

“If that building had these minimum measures, probably it wouldn’t have fallen down,” La Fever said. “If you pass it (the ordinance), you could be saving people’s lives today.”

But nearly a dozen Ventura landlords testified after La Fever that they believed that city engineers who helped draft the ordinance overestimated the amount of fatalities and property damage that would follow an earthquake in downtown Ventura. And they said the work will be too expensive.

John Hibbs, a spokesman for the Committee to Preserve Historic Ventura, told the council that any Ventura resident has a 1-in-a-billion chance of dying in an unreinforced masonry building during an earthquake, according to a mathematician he had hired.

“How many lives do you think we can save?” Hibbs said.

“Despite the terrible thing we heard about this evening, Ventura is not San Francisco,” laundry operator Susan Huff said. “My chances of being hurt in an earthquake here in Ventura are very slight.”

Earlier this year, the council considered an ordinance that would have required landlords to strengthen all unreinforced masonry buildings.

But in July, the Legislature amended the building code to require such work to be done whenever the uses of unreinforced masonry buildings are changed. For instance, a landlord converting a building from a store to a restaurant would be required to do the reinforcing work. That amendment takes effect in 1993.

However, the council scheduled a public hearing Dec. 9 on a similar proposal that would take effect in 1992.