Quake Panel Urges Law on Retrofitting Buildings

In its final report on the deadly San Simeon earthquake, the state’s Seismic Safety Commission on Friday called on Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and the Legislature to require that 8,700 unreinforced masonry buildings be retrofitted within five years.

The commission’s recommendation, if carried out, would mark a significant shift in state policy on seismic retrofitting. Retrofitting older masonry buildings is not mandated by the state, although a 1986 law strongly suggests that communities adopt strict deadlines.

Seismologists have long considered masonry buildings to be the most sensitive to earthquake damage, a point bolstered by December’s 6.5 magnitude temblor in Paso Robles in which two people died when an unreinforced structure collapsed on them, and 47 people were injured.

The commission determined that only nine of 53 such buildings in downtown Paso Robles had been retrofitted. Damage and casualties would have been much less severe had they been, the group said.

Some parts of the state have been more successful than others in retrofitting unreinforced masonry buildings to make them safer. Los Angeles County, which has the largest number of the structures, has retrofitted to some degree or demolished 85% of such buildings.

But the commission found that elsewhere, local government has allowed property owners to delay making the improvements.

Some property owners have complained about the cost of retrofitting.

A spokeswoman in the governor’s press office had no immediate reaction to the report.

The commission also took aim at a state law requiring warning placards on unreinforced buildings. The commission found that the law is often ignored and that the state should impose fines on property owners who don’t post them.

The placards should also tell where occupants can find more information about their building’s risks and learn what must be done to make them safer, the commission said.

In another finding, the commission said that public reactions during the San Simeon quake “illustrate that there is confusion about what building occupants -- the public -- should do to avoid injury during earthquakes.”

The two women who died in Paso Robles had fled the building and were killed when parts of it collapsed on them in the street. They might have been safer had they stayed put, said expert witnesses who testified before the commission in two days of public hearings in Paso Robles in March.

The commission said the state Department of Education, in cooperation with the Governor’s Office of Emergency Services and the commission, should develop curricula for public and private schools on earthquake and building safety to better prepare citizens to live safely with earthquakes.

Other counties have not done as well as Los Angeles in retrofitting the masonry buildings. Orange County has retrofitted 61% of more than 700 buildings and San Francisco has upgraded 59% of more than 2,000.

San Diego County, however, has a comparatively poor record, with only 15% of 215 such buildings retrofitted, and San Bernardino and Riverside counties have retrofitted only 14% of hundreds of buildings.

Kern County has retrofitted 10% of about 500 such buildings.