We’d Better Start Living Up to Our Standards : Earthquake safety codes are easy to write, tough to obey

California’s Seismic Safety Commission, based in Sacramento, is a state advisory panel that was created in 1975. It is an influential body on matters involving earthquake preparedness, and for good reason. Over the years, the commission’s members and staff have included top-flight structural engineers, geologists and Caltech professors. In other words, these are serious folks who do not generally fall prey to hype, hyperbole or catchy sound bites.

The commission has been concerned with several weighty issues since the Northridge earthquake. Among them: considerations on the need to retrofit schools, concerns about the adequacy of current construction standards, and the matter of how much can be done in these tight fiscal times.

Now, the commission has dropped something of a bombshell involving the approximately 11,800 buildings damaged in the Northridge-centered earthquake. Its final report ought to be required reading for local and state officials in Southern California.

The main conclusion: Building codes, in most instances, were adequate--but many buildings weren’t. The commission found that many of the structures that were damaged showed evidence of shoddy construction and flawed design. There also were building inspections, before the earthquake, that should have pointed out such shortcomings, but didn’t.

A quote that says it all comes from Paul Fratessa, the commission’s chairman: “We would not have had a lot of the damage we had . . . if we had taken what we had today and used it properly.”

It’s not the first time that we’ve heard this.

In February, experts at a hearing at Van Nuys Airport told the commission that such problems were to blame for a considerable amount of the damage that occurred in the quake. Again, the source was a persuasive one: Rawn Nelson, the president-elect of the Structural Engineers Assn. of California.

“One of the items that we have commonly found is that there has been some poor methods of construction as well as some engineering done that did not understand the basic principles of engineering,” Nelson said then. “We have found anchor bolts not screwed to plates, but simply lying beside them. That doesn’t do any good at all. And there has often been improper bracing.”

Engineering done that did not understand the basic principles of engineering? That’s not just unsettling. It ought to be infuriating for businesses, building owners and the taxpayers who are footing the bill for quake repairs and recovery.

It’s also important for one very big reason. Engineers eventually will determine the kind of standards that will be needed to prevent cracks in the welds of steel-frame buildings in a quake of similar intensity to the Northridge temblor. New standards are also attainable in the case of wood-frame buildings.

The problem is that the new standards won’t matter a whit if architects, engineers, contractors and code-enforcement officials who weren’t able to follow the old rules do the same thing when asked to follow new standards.

One of the commission’s solutions is a call for mandatory additional training for architects, engineers, contractors and building inspectors. Who can argue with that?