Will your house survive a major earthquake? California Free Cash can help

With more than 1 million California homes in need of seismic retrofit, the California Earthquake Authority and the Governor’s Office of Emergency Services launched a program 10 years ago to cover at least part of the cost of supporting the foundations of older homes in earthquake zones.

The all-new Earthquake Brace + Bolt secured the foundations of nine homes in its first year—not a first-time Barnburner. But the point, as Janelle Maffei puts it, was simply to “support the software, and see if it works.”

It’s helping a lot more homeowners these days, said Maffei, the earthquake authority’s chief mitigation officer, having recently achieved a 20,000 update. The EBB program typically offers a round of grants each year, and usually opens the application window for a limited time in the fall.

Currently, the program is offering a special round of grants to residents of Humboldt County, which has been hit by a series of earthquakes and aftershocks over the past six months. Maffei said applications from eligible homeowners in the county will be accepted through July 31.

No date has been set for the next round of EBB funding for applicants in the rest of the state, but Maffei has guessed it will happen before the end of this year.

Here’s more information about how the program works, what it does in Humboldt County, and how to alert you the next time grants are available.

What does “brace and bolt” mean?

Strong ground motions caused by an earthquake can destroy a home, rupturing water and gas lines and making the structure unstable. If this happens in your home, local inspectors will “red flag” it, meaning they will ban you from living there until repairs are made.

Homes built since 1980 had to comply with building codes that made them less vulnerable in an earthquake. But if you’re in an older home with a raised foundation—the kind that has a crawl space between the floor and the underside of the main floor—the bulk of the house may not be securely attached to the supports below.

Bracing means bracing the “battered walls” that raise the house a few feet above the ground, adding boards between studs for cupped walls and covering the interior walls with a layer of plywood. Reinforcing helps hold faulty walls together when the ground shakes violently.

To “slip” means to attach the wooden frame to the concrete foundation with thick metal clamps, preventing it from bouncing back with an earthquake. Homes that are on top of their foundations also benefit from sealing.

According to the program, the average cost of an EBB-funded retrofit is approximately $5,500. The cost of refacing your home will depend on its size, as well as the condition of the foundation and faulty walls.

How does the Earthquake Brace + Bolt work?

The program’s standard grant reimburses homeowners up to $3,000 for work done to strengthen their foundations and secure their water heater. Low-income families — those earning up to $72,080 per year — are eligible for a supplemental grant of up to $2,650 in Southern California and $7,000 in Northern California, which may be enough to cover the full cost of home cementing and closing.

But the state will not hand over the money until the work is completed and approved. This means that you will have to cover the cost of the work up front unless you can find a contractor who is willing to wait for the grant money to come in.

Program rules determine which homes, retrofits, and contractors qualify. An eligible dwelling must:

That it was built before 1980, on flat ground or a slight slope. Be the primary residence of the person applying for the scholarship. Be located in the zip code targeted by the program. The zip codes are those in US Geological Survey seismic hazard areas that have a high percentage of homes built before 1940, Maffei said.

Homeowners must:

Hire a contractor listed in the program manual, or if the broken walls are no more than 4 feet high, do the work themselves, and wait until you have been accepted into the program before obtaining a building permit for the upgrade. Safety chapter of current California Building Code or standard retrofit plan, pass final inspection by local Department of Buildings and Safety, and submit preconfiguration photos of their home, along with work plans and other documentation, within 90 days. Work cannot begin until approved by the program. Complete work within six months of your documents being approved by the EBB, if the scholarship is federally funded. Whether the grant is funded by the state or the feds, homeowners will need to provide photos, receipts, and other evidence that the work was done properly.

In short, if you want to be considered for a grant, you will need to be accepted into the program before hiring anyone or obtaining a permit, provide required evidence that your home needs rehab, do work on the spot to state specifications, and then show proof of work and your expenses. This is when a payment (or your contractor can be paid) can take place.

Enrollment in the program is now open only to homeowners in Humboldt County. To be notified when subscriptions open for other earthquake risk areas in the state, enter your email address on the EBB See If You Qualified page.

More money for Humboldt County

Located near the Mendocino triple junction of tectonic plates, Humboldt County is prone to an unusual number of earthquakes. To make matters worse, many homes in the area have column and column foundations, which use wood poles or concrete piers to raise the first floor a few feet off the ground.

Pint-sized stilts provide ventilation for the foundation and keep the house above soggy ground, Maffei said. But in the event of a strong earthquake, those supports can break. It said it was the “worst possible performer” when it came to seismic safety.

Maffei said the building code allows red-taped homeowners to put such homes back directly on their foundations, which would otherwise make them fail again. This is where the pile-and-bolt program comes in, offering grants that can be used to add continuous concrete perimeter and bolted slotted walls to make the piles more resilient in an earthquake.

Last fall, 169 Humboldt County homes registered for the program before the application window closed. The province was then hit by the first of a series of powerful earthquakes, with a magnitude of 6.4 in the early hours of December 20. The earthquakes prompted the EBB program to offer another tour just for homeowners in 13 ZIP codes in Humboldt County.

However, program grants cannot be used to repair a home that has been destroyed from the ground up. They can only be used to protect against future damage. So homeowners in Humboldt County who are red flagged will need to complete basic repair work before hiring contractors to build a stronger foundation.

To qualify for assistance in Humboldt County, you must meet the EBB rules described above. You can check your eligibility and apply for a scholarship on the EBB website.

ICYMI: More coverage of the California earthquake

Scientists have a theory about why Southern California hasn’t experienced a major San Andreas fault earthquake in the past 300 years—a much longer gap than history would suggest is typical. It’s about the drying up of the Salton Sea, but it comes with a caveat: A dried-up lake can’t protect us from a major earthquake.

Does your home have living space above a garage? Scientists warn that this common feature poses a collapse risk during an earthquake. The risks are similar to those in apartment buildings where parking lots or garages on the ground floor are held up by weak poles. A number of cities, including Los Angeles and San Francisco, require an update to these thin-floor apartments. But soft-storey homes have flown under the radar.

Did you feel it and hear it? Not the earthquake itself, but the early warning. Millions of Californians did. Depending on their distance from a December 2022 6.4-magnitude earthquake near Ferndale in Northern California, people had up to 20 seconds of warning from their phones in what amounts to one of the biggest real-world tests of the system. If you want an early warning, download the MyShake app.

Thank you for subscribing to Unshaken, The Times newsletter guide to earthquake preparedness and resilience. More earthquake coverage >>

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