Governor Plans Conference on Quake Readiness : Safety: Meeting of public and private interests will foreshadow development of legislative program to implement lessons of the Northridge temblor. State panel says California is behind schedule on preparedness.

The Wilson Administration plans to convene a major conference of public and private interests later this year to consider changes in the state’s earthquake preparedness plans and building standards.

The conference was a recommendation of the State Seismic Safety Commission in its recent report on the lessons of the Northridge earthquake, and it will foreshadow development of a Wilson legislative program to implement at least parts of the report, said Camden McEfee, an aide to Gov. Pete Wilson who is charged with coordinating the Administration’s response.

“It has taken the Seismic Safety Commission 18 months to gather recommendations,” McEfee said in an interview. “It will take a significant amount of time to implement. It’s not going to happen overnight, but I think the commitment from the governor is there. The Administration is acutely aware of the threat to public safety.”

In its report this month, the seismic commission said the Northridge quake would have inflicted far less damage if building codes had been rigorously enforced. The report castigated engineers, designers and building officials for failures in this regard and said California has slipped behind schedule in meeting goals established 10 years ago for earthquake mitigation.

McEfee and another Wilson Administration official, Joanne C. Kozberg, secretary of the State and Consumer Services Agency, said that in all likelihood private funding would be sought to defray the expense of holding what has been called the California Earthquake Risk Colloquium.

This conference has been championed especially by Wilfred Iwan, a Caltech professor who is a former head of the Seismic Safety Commission. He has said its chief task should be to decide what constitutes an acceptable level of risk in California. From such a determination, many decisions of new building codes could flow.

The Wilson Administration has not quite signed off on a key recommendation in the seismic safety report, to vest ultimate accountability for the state’s building codes in the Building Standards Commission.

That is a body within the consumer services agency that has only six staff members and a very restricted purview. Giving it new power and a larger staff is among the recommendations that would require legislative action.

Some Administration aides point out that traditionally in Sacramento, it is hard to pass measures that give substantial new authority to one government group over all others. The others tend to resist.

Richard Conrad, executive director of the Building Standards Commission, said: “I would reserve judgment on vesting accountability in our group. I’ve been here 10 years, and have seen a number of proposals for change, and generally there has been a lot of resistance. You have to try to facilitate a cooperative reception.”

Some say that the conference or colloquium planned by the end of the year, if well handled, could ease the way for reform proposals.

McEfee said “it is pretty early” to decide what recommendations will be included in a legislative package. H and Kozberg noted that the governor has asked each of his agency heads to report on their reaction to the seismic safety report within 30 days.

“Nothing has been thrown out yet,” McEfee said. “We’ve asked them to comment, prioritize, tell us what they think we can do immediately, what is a little more problematic and anything they consider impossible.”

“The Building Standards Commission is small,” Kozberg noted. “But we are spearheading a working group in our agency that will come up with proposed legislation.”

That group, which met last week, is chaired by Los Angeles structural engineer Nabib Youssef, whose firm designed the $153-million project for seismic strengthening at Los Angeles City Hall.

Youssef said last week that it is vital that as building authorities move toward national codes, the “vested interests of California in strong earthquake protection measures” be protected.

Kozberg said: “We need to put an emphasis on building practices. We need to make sure we can enforce the codes properly. I’m very committed to that, and the governor is too.”