Earthquakes in Turkey and Syria are California’s wake-up

The devastating earthquakes that rocked Turkey and Syria last Monday claimed more than 23,000 lives – a number that is likely to increase as rescue teams are still finding victims amid the rubble of more than 3,500 collapsed buildings.

Such a massive death toll is hard to comprehend and may seem impossible here in California. However, the reality is that an earthquake of similar magnitude near Los Angeles or San Francisco could injure or kill thousands of residents and displace many more, temporarily or permanently, from their damaged or destroyed homes.

California needs to get ready.

In Turkey, many collapsed buildings suffered similar structural weaknesses to those found in older building types across California—such as “soft-floored” apartment buildings or “brittle” concrete buildings. A typical soft-storey building is an apartment building with two or more floors located above ground level with large openings and few interior walls, such as a parking garage or retail store. Although California has begun retrofitting soft storey buildings, this type of building is still among the most common and most collapse-prone in the state.

In fact, we have already seen these buildings collapse. During the 1994 Northridge earthquake, for example, 16 people died in the collapse of only one apartment complex that had this type of structure. The American Resilience Council, a nonprofit organization dedicated to implementing rating systems that describe building performance during earthquakes and other natural hazards, estimates that in Southern California alone there are more than 150,000 soft-floor housing units at risk. If we estimate that 2.9 people live in each of these units, which is the average people per household in California as estimated by the Census, then there are about 435,000 Californians living in these buildings at risk in Southern California.

With California already in the depths of a housing crisis, what can the state do to address the problem? Requires rehabilitation of homes in areas with high seismic activity.

Conditioning homes, especially affordable condominiums, is a cost-effective way to address earthquake safety for California residents. Modifying existing affordable housing costs $9,000 and $20,000 per unit (in 2018 dollars), according to research by David Bonowitz, a structural engineer based in San Francisco. This is a much cheaper investment compared to building new, affordable housing that meets current safety codes, which in 2016 cost about $425,000 per unit, according to a 2020 report from the UC Berkeley Turner Center. Retrofitting is a logical solution that has the potential to save thousands of lives in the event of a major earthquake.

In 2019, after the 7.1-magnitude Ridgecrest earthquake struck Southern California, Governor Gavin Newsom rallied city and state leaders to stand behind improving earthquake safety measures saying, “We all have an opportunity now to prepare more, to be more vigilant, to look at our building codes, Look at home hardening…to prepare for the next earthquake with a magnitude greater than 7.1.”

In response to the governor’s charge, the American Resilience Council has assembled a diverse coalition of statewide fair housing organizations, apartment owners associations, chambers of commerce, environmental organizations, as well as realtors, city and building officials to determine the best possible retrofit plan. homes of the state’s most vulnerable residents.

Last year, the coalition’s efforts resulted in the unanimous, bipartisan approval of SB189, a bill signed into law by Newsom in June to create the Soft Story Multifamily Housing Seismic Retrofit Program — a program that would provide grants for seismic retrofits to building owners. Residential in from two units to 20 units. SB189 also allocated the $250 million needed to fund the program over 10 years as part of the state budget starting with the 2023-2024 budget cycle.

But last month, the program was dropped from the governor’s draft budget for 2023-2024. While Newsom’s office has not commented on its rationale for the deletion, the cut is likely part of the governor’s goal to resolve this year’s budget deficit.

Taking credits would be wrong.

Soft-story earthquake retrofitting ordinances in San Francisco and Los Angeles have encouraged other cities like San Jose and Palo Alto to consider similar programs, but many are banking on the state’s new program to make their efforts viable.

Cutting the state program will halt many of these local efforts.

The governor could still add the $250 million to this year’s budget as required by the bill he signed into law. Failure to do so will leave hundreds of thousands of Californians unprotected and, in the event of a massive earthquake, could have fatal repercussions as well as exacerbate an already dire housing crisis for years to come.

As response and recovery efforts continue in Turkey and Syria, please consider making a donation. It will take years to recover from this devastation. The truth is, we can never predict when the next big earthquake will strike. But as the shocking photos from Turkey and Syria make clear, when it comes to preparing California for the next big event, there’s no time to lose.

Sarah Atkinson is director of earthquake policy at the San Francisco Bay Area Urban Planning and Research Association. Evan Reese is the Executive Director of the American Resilience Council.

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