Heeding Seismic Report Can Save Money, Lives : Commission shows how to minimize future quake damage

Last week in this space we pointed out that the damage sustained by Cal State Northridge University’s Oviatt Library in the 1994 Northridge earthquake was stunning in its extent.

It was damage like this--unexpected and avoidable--throughout the region that powered the California Seismic Safety Commission’s 157 recommendations on how to be better prepared. We have since gotten the commission to focus on what they regard as the most important of those recommendations.

Their suggestions cannot be brushed aside merely because some additional cost will be necessary. What the commission suggests are several efficient options, and those that are more expensive ought to be considered in the following light: Preventive health care is always far less costly than is the treatment of avoidable illness and disease. The same can obviously be said of our infrastructure.

It makes sense, for example, to consider putting responsibility for seismic design, plans, quality assurance and inspection in the hands of a single design professional, instead of several. It makes sense to study whether licensing boards aggressively enforce competency requirements. It makes sense to better ensure that state and local government building departments reject incomplete or incompetent plans. It makes sense to consider continuing education and recertification for professional engineers.

Why not, for example, allow a special, high-level task force to consider whether we are requiring acceptable levels of earthquake safety and performance objectives for buildings?

Is it also possible to have a workable program in which banks and insurance companies create incentives to encourage seismic strengthening? Could they offer lower rates on homes that have been retrofitted? All of these seem like reasonable suggestions to us.

The most distressing, in terms of high costs, are recommendations for retrofitting. The commission wants legislation that would require that a plan be in place by the year 2000 to retrofit most structures that are vulnerable to seismic hazard. Then, improvements could be accomplished within the next 20 years.

Even the commission acknowledges that it would be impossible to create an environment in which every structure is safe from major damage, and built in or moved to an area in which seismic hazard is minimal. Obviously, that would be prohibitively expensive.

What we do need, however, is to move closer toward real seismic safety. The reason is simple. Much of what happened to homes, emergency facilities, bridges, schools, shopping areas and office buildings during those nine seconds of shaking on Jan. 17, 1994, could have been minimized or perhaps avoided outright. It’s the commission’s job to point that out, and that is exactly what they have managed to do.