Building Codes and Collapsed Balcony

The news coverage on the tragedy of the collapsed balcony has been extensive but superficial (Times, Nov. 16). No one has mentioned that the City of Malibu has been trying to institute stricter building codes and geological and environmental requirements so that disasters such as this one--and the Big Rock kind of overdevelopment--wouldn’t happen.

As a result, the city is inundated with lawsuits filed by irate developers and people who don’t realize that overbuilding and ignoring the fragile geology of the coastal areas will result in more such disasters--and dwindling property values--not the other way around, as developers would like us to believe.

The strategy seems obvious. Keep the city tied up in lawsuits and there won’t be funds left for enforcing the laws they pass--or for checking on the conditions of these poorly built and ill-maintained structures. What we need is to make those builders who would subvert the city’s good efforts accountable for future failures of any buildings they construct--because there is no way of preventing anyone from cutting corners and ignoring the instability of a building site.

We know the problems we face in Malibu; corrosive sea air, slide-prone hillsides, poor accessibility. Added to that indiscriminate, unchecked building and zoning violations make a bad situation even worse. But that is precisely why we need to institute and maintain the laws we pass. If we did, such tragic disasters wouldn’t have to happen.

E. G. OLINGER

Malibu