Quake Damage: How Much Is Too Much? : Conference should fill a hole in existing policy for preparedness and building standards

The Wilson Administration says it will convene a major conference this year on earthquake preparedness and building standards. What should the agenda include? Well, the best indication comes from the state Seismic Safety Commission, which called for a conference after the 1994 Northridge earthquake. A question that must be addressed, the commission says, is that of acceptable risk.

“There is no explicit policy regarding what constitutes minimally acceptable levels of earthquake damage, or risk, in California,” the commission report said. “This lack of policy direction makes it difficult, if not impossible, for the commission to recommend what should be done to achieve higher levels of seismic safety, what building designers and code writers should set as performance objectives, or how much should be spent to reduce risk.”

If that lack of explicit policy made it difficult for the commission to conduct its work, how much harder will it be for elected officials, from the localities on up to the governor’s office, to enact appropriate laws and set reasonable standards for new codes and requirements?

California’s current building codes were shown to be generally adequate in terms of the protection of life and limb, as long as those codes were strictly enforced. (In too many instances they were not.) But the commission points out that nothing in those codes was intended to protect against the kind of massive economic damage that made the 1994 Northridge quake the most expensive natural disaster in U.S. history.

Given the difficulties encountered in squeezing more disaster aid funding out of the current Congress, California will need to have a clearly defined sense of minimum performance standards. It needs a sense of how a region ought to weather such a quake. Everything else, including specific codes and requirements, will logically follow.