Disputes Delay Seismic Safety Panel’s Report : Quakes: A minority advocates stronger recommendations while a majority fears alienating Legislature and state agencies. Study already is 4 1/2 months late.

The state Seismic Safety Commission’s report to the governor on lessons learned from the Northridge earthquake has been delayed for months, in part because commissioners and staff members have disagreed about how hard-hitting the recommendations should be for reforming building codes and land-use planning.

Although a board minority has continued to advocate stronger wording in the advisory report, the majority has been urging a softer approach, fearing that tough language would be too politically unpalatable to win support in the Legislature or state agencies.

The commission had planned to release its report today, about 4 1/2 months late. But the panel has failed to make that deadline and now hopes to release the report within a month.

The ongoing debate concerns crucial issues that could have an impact on the state’s strategy for mitigating earthquake damage--including how fast freeway bridges should be retrofitted, what should be done to correct weaknesses in steel-frame buildings revealed in the Jan. 17 earthquake, and how stringent requirements should be for retrofitting homes.

The majority has already prevailed on a significant question. The commission has set aside for future discussions a definition of what constitutes acceptable risk in protecting buildings and utility lifelines. This means there will be no call now for adopting costly standards that would keep buildings and utilities functioning in strong earthquakes, rather than just preserving them from collapse.

“I’ve been very frustrated at our meetings that we could not come to grips with the question of what is acceptable risk,” said Wilfred Iwan, director of Caltech’s earthquake engineering research laboratory and a critic of the commission’s softer approach.

“The easy solutions to mitigating earthquake risks have been thought of and taken care of,” he said in an interview. “As you go on, things become more and more difficult and the costs become greater.”

The commission’s report is expected to advise the governor to call together a colloquium of experts and representatives of the building industry and other interest groups to formulate what the standard of acceptable risk should be.

In an executive order three weeks after the Northridge quake, Gov. Pete Wilson told the 17-member commission to issue its report by Sept. 1. When it was not ready, the commission set a deadline of the first anniversary of the quake.

However, despite adoption of the report in concept at its last meeting in Sacramento on Dec. 8, some commission members have continued to dispute the wording of portions of the document, particularly its 70-page third chapter, Achieving Seismic Safety in Buildings.

According to staff sources, the report is expected to:

* Call for faster retrofitting of the state’s bridges, and particularly the San Francisco Bay’s toll bridges. But at the urging of Caltrans, the report also will commend Caltrans for trying to do the best it can with available financial resources.

* Encourage local governments to create incentives for quick retrofitting of homes through tax breaks or to require retrofitting, such as bolting foundations, when homes are sold. But the report will not advocate that the state require such retrofitting and make changes in the Uniform Building Code.

* Say that further research is required before precise retrofitting and repair steps can be recommended for buildings whose steel frames cracked in the quake.

* Recommend that the State Building Standards Commission be given broad statutory responsibility for the state’s building codes, which no single group has now.

These recommendations and others have been the subject of lengthy public hearings, meetings, correspondence with state and federal agencies, and reports from members of technical advisory groups, some of whom have been critical of the commission.

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In an interview, structural engineer John A. Martin Jr. of Los Angeles, a member of the Review Buildings Group, said members of his advisory panel had been told by the commission staff to tone down their recommendations on the issue of steel- frame buildings.

Having inspected 30 damaged steel-frame buildings after the quake, Martin expressed concern about what would happen to these unrepaired buildings if there was another sizable temblor.

“We may not know everything about what corrective steps can be taken, but we can make (buildings) better now,” Martin said. “We can’t protect them 100%, but we can make the buildings as good as they were, if not better.”

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Martin said he doesn’t like the draft language of the commission report on steel-frame buildings “because you’re letting something sit in an unsafe condition,” although he acknowledged that it may be three years before a complete solution can be found. The steel industry is studying possible retrofitting methods, and the Clinton Administration this week set aside $6.7 million in federal funds for research on the problem.

A number of commission staff members declined to comment directly on Martin’s criticisms, but one, speaking on condition of anonymity, said: “We could have written some things differently, more sharply, more stridently. But the report is wiser and potentially far more effective than it would have been had we done so.”

Another member of the building review group, UC Berkeley engineering professor Egor P. Popov, said: “They have been doing quite a bit of editing of what we turned in, but I wouldn’t say they were softening.”

Popov said he had told two staff members who were active in writing the report--Bruce Norton and Fred Turner--that he considered drafts of the steel section to be “really skimpy” and “not adequate.”

Norton did not return calls seeking comment, but in two interviews Turner said he knows the technical advisers are dissatisfied with the draft.

Of Popov, Turner said: “He has to realize we’re not writing this thing for his colleagues, but for people making public policy. We’re trying to tread down the middle of the road.”

Turner said he believes a solution will be found for the cracking of steel-frame buildings, but it won’t happen right away. He noted that there are many in the Legislature and elsewhere who resist spending money on partial solutions.

“The 1933 building code reforms after the Long Beach earthquake didn’t take effect altogether by 1934, but by the 1970s we had produced a building stock in California that had substantially mitigated risks,” he said.

A commission minority--which includes the present chairman, structural engineer Paul Fratessa, Iwan of Caltech, utilities representative Lloyd S. Cluff and volunteer organizations representative Patricia Snyder--have been pressing for a more strongly worded report.

By contrast, such members as Los Angeles City Councilman Hal Bernson, Palo Alto’s chief building official Frederick M. Herman, architect Gary L. McGavin and emergency services representative Frances E. Winslow, have argued against making recommendations that they say would languish for lack of political support or cost a great deal in hard fiscal times.

“I feel strongly that in our report we ought to let the chips fall where they may,” Iwan said. “At the same time, you have to say things in a way that will get things done. There’s a difficult balance.”

One place where the commission has struggled to find a balance is the issue of retrofitting freeway bridges and toll bridges. After an early draft of the report forcefully urged that the process be accelerated, Caltrans officials wrote the commission and urged that the final report recognize the agency’s efforts to finish most retrofitting by 1997.

Although several commissioners at the Dec. 8 meeting said they didn’t believe Caltrans would be able to stick to its schedule, the commission adopted compromise language.

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L. Thomas Tobin, the commission’s executive director, said the latest draft report on the Bay Area toll bridges urges that the effort “be accelerated because of the critical importance of these structures, and that Caltrans efforts to do so be supported.” So far, no state funds have been designated for the toll bridge retrofitting statewide, which is expected to cost hundreds of millions of dollars.

Snyder, who is a Red Cross official, expressed frustration with the governor’s executive order for the report, calling it “very vague.”

“I’ve read that thing over and over again, and I keep saying it’s not clear what we are supposed to do,” she said.

“There have been discussions in the commission that if we came out with really strong recommendations that cost a lot, it may fall on deaf ears and they’ll do nothing,” Snyder said.