Central Coast Lags State in Retrofitting

City leaders twice in the 1990s allowed building owners to delay the earthquake retrofitting of brick buildings. The hope was that the work would be completed before a major earthquake hit.

But on Dec. 22, a 6.5-magnitude temblor struck in nearby San Simeon.

Two women were killed by falling debris while fleeing an 1890s-era brick building in downtown Paso Robles. Other brick buildings across the city’s downtown also were damaged, and an estimated $222 million in damages occurred throughout San Luis Obispo County.

Paso Robles is by no means alone in granting delays for seismic retrofitting. Though 65% of the pre-1933 unreinforced masonry buildings in the state have been retrofitted or demolished, more than one-third continue to pose a serious threat during an earthquake, state seismic experts report.

The state adopted higher building standards after an earthquake of 6.4 magnitude hit Long Beach on March 10, 1933, killing about 120 people.

Santa Cruz and Watsonville had to demolish brick buildings and rebuild some of their downtowns after the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake. And after the Northridge quake 10 years ago, communities such as Santa Monica saw extensive damage to brick buildings.

Paso Robles is in a region of the state with a particularly poor track record.

“The Central Coast is significantly behind the rest of the state in retrofitting,” said Fred Turner, a structural engineer for the California Seismic Safety Commission.

Only 33% of the older at-risk masonry buildings have been retrofitted or demolished throughout San Luis Obispo County, compared with the 65% state average, state records show.

The city of San Luis Obispo has 100 older masonry buildings, including 40 on its popular main drag. City leaders decided in 1995 that those buildings would not face mandatory retrofitting until 2017.

“We have about 100 buildings left,” San Luis Obispo Mayor Dave Romero said last week. “We would have had a disaster in our own downtown if we were shaken like Paso. So we are gambling, and we have been lucky so far.”

Romero asked the City Council at Tuesday’s meeting to reactivate an earthquake advisory committee in light of the San Simeon quake, and contemplate speeding up that 2017 timetable. But he also says there is a political reality that local politicians face.

“These building owners are some of the most influential citizens in the community, so City Council members have to decide how badly they want to tick them off,” he said.

Retrofitting unreinforced masonry buildings is not mandated by the state, although it is strongly suggested in a 1986 law that communities adopt strict deadlines. The state has suggested timetables of three to 10 years, but that timetable started in 1990, so all buildings still unreinforced are long overdue, structural engineer Turner said.

Seismic retrofitting is expensive. In 1998, Paso Robles business and building owners argued that the estimated $150,000-per-building expense would halt an economic upswing in a revitalized downtown bouncing back after decades of decay.

Tenants often line up with building owners on the same side of this issue because they have to close down during the repairs.

“We were just getting back on our feet in 1998,” explained Norma Moye, executive director of the Paso Robles Main Street Assn. Her group, the Paso Robles Chamber of Commerce, and other business leaders lobbied hard before the Paso Robles City Council to see deadlines extended, said City Manager Jim App.

The City Council opted to extend the deadline for eight high-risk buildings from 2000 to 2008. An additional 58 buildings, of which 42 remain unreinforced, had deadlines extended from 2008 to 2018. The Acorn Building, where the two women were killed, was not considered high-risk and was not mandated for retrofitting until 2018.

“It can cost a good portion of the value of the whole building. The public perception here is that it’s not a very seismically active area, but historically, earthquakes do happen on a regular basis,” said Abe Lynn, chairman of the architectural engineering department at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo.

Though the Paso Robles City Council expects to revisit the issue of seismic retrofitting after the earthquake, there is no guarantee that it will speed up the deadlines.

“We’ve got tons of things in front of us right now,” Mayor Frank Mecham said. “We really don’t even know how much we have spent as a city to deal with all of this. It’s difficult to get beyond the immediate to the larger issues.”

Mecham said he wasn’t on the council when the earlier decisions were made, but he believes the decision to push voluntary retrofitting was understandable.

He said he would have to hear from his colleagues and the business community before deciding on how to proceed on changing retrofitting deadlines. But he said a sword of Damocles hangs over small-town officials who move slowly.

“I think we have been hoping all along that we could get these retrofits done before we had an earthquake,” Mecham said. “It’s just a heck of a gamble to take. We’re confronted now with the disaster, the remains, and the issue all over again.

“What we can’t do is make the mistake by thinking we had our earthquake, and we won’t have another one. That could be a horrible mistake.”

The Acorn Building, which sustained the most damage, will be demolished. City experts think another large building on the city square will have to be demolished because it continues to shift in aftershocks, and 25 businesses in primarily brick buildings remain red-tagged.

But many businesses that were in buildings that had been seismically upgraded are back in business and serving customers.

Though some jurisdictions in the state mandate deadlines for retrofitting, others are much more liberal with building owners, moving the deadlines back or even adjusting them to include cheaper retrofits than the state suggests, Turner said.

Santa Maria, in northern Santa Barbara County, has adopted a policy allowing for seismic retrofitting to 75% of the accepted standards.

Turner said communities also fail to retrofit publicly owned buildings such as the historic Carnegie Library in downtown Paso Robles or the historic brick Atascadero City Hall.