The epidemic is slowing down the city’s efforts to prepare a seismic safety database for buildings • Long Beach Post News

Officials said Long Beach is working on preparing a database that will index the seismic safety of nearly 3,000 buildings, but efforts have been slower this year due to the coronavirus pandemic.

The project comes as a 4.6-magnitude earthquake struck the region last week and was felt by people in Long Beach and Catalina.

The initial effort, which began last year, was estimated to take about two years to complete, but city officials, including Mayor Robert Garcia, at a city council meeting in July 2019, urged employees to work faster.

In an interview this week, Director of Development Services Oscar Orsi said this year the city planned to start building a list that would record the potential vulnerability of thousands of structures in the event of an earthquake.

However, he said the process is still in the planning stage because the COVID-19 lockdown and health orders are making it difficult for engineers to enter some buildings.

But the good news, Orsi said, is that the city concludes the first phase of the project which includes a comprehensive report on what other cities and counties have done to similar databases. The city council is expected to review the report later this year or early next year, so that the city can begin the inventory phase.

The project will take several months to complete and will involve engineers mapping and inspecting up to 3,500 old buildings, including residential and commercial buildings.

Orsi said a comprehensive seismic safety database will help the city determine how to proceed with retrofitting some of the most vulnerable buildings.

“Our approach was very cautious, very methodical and very comprehensive,” he said.

Some California cities – including San Francisco, Santa Monica, Burbank, West Hollywood, and Beverly Hills – have moved forward with mandatory retrofit ordinances. Los Angeles has issued a mandatory retrofit decree since 2015 that covers more than 15,000 buildings.

Long Beach had a mandatory retrofit decree in the late 1990s that included more than 600 apartment buildings built before 1934. However, this effort was problematic because many of the property owners did not undertake the necessary repairs and were subsequently sued by the city.

Based on the database, Long Beach could study a new type of compulsory order or some kind of incentive program, but that is up to the city council, Orsi said.

Long Beach is the site of the deadliest earthquake in Southern California, when the 6.4 earthquake of 1933 killed about 120 people and caused $ 40 million in damage.

Last year, a Harvard University study found that a fault line that runs deep into the Los Angeles and Long Beach ports, called Wilmington Blind Propulsion, is active and can cause a large-scale earthquake.

Source: Long Beach

In a press release on Thursday, the city reminded residents that September is the month of national preparation. The city offers several preparedness resources on its website, including an emergency planning guide and tips for developing a family communications plan.

Residents are also encouraged to subscribe to Alert Long Beach to receive emergency notices.

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