The hidden earthquake danger lurking inside California homes

There could be hidden seismic faults in a single-family home in California — enough to be devastating and potentially deadly in the next big quake.

One risk that may come as a surprise to homeowners is that even relatively newer homes may have this defect.

Soft story seismic fault in houses

Built before 2000, they are known as “soft story” homes – single-family homes with living space above the garage. They are vulnerable to collapse because the upper floor is supported only by thin, flimsy supports that can bend or break in an earthquake, causing the living room or bedroom to collapse into the garage.

Example of a house with living space above a garage, which could be vulnerable to collapse in the event of an earthquake.

(Federal Emergency Management Agency)

Reinforcing a garage to fix a collapse defect is fairly simple. This involves installing one steel column or one or two custom-designed walls 12 to 18 inches wide, made of either steel or wood and acting like columns. They are designed to withstand the side-to-side shaking that comes with an earthquake.

A single steel column is one way to retrofit an earthquake-prone home, where there is a living space above the garage.

(Janelle Maffei/California Residential Mitigation Program)

Another dangerous type of house is those that have a “cripple wall” – a short, flimsy wall that creates a crawl space beneath the main part of the house.

Seismic fault in creep space

Because the house is not securely anchored to the foundation, the house could slide or fall off its foundation in an earthquake, potentially causing hundreds of thousands of dollars in damage.

These homes were typically built before 1980, and especially before 1940. This repair is designed to shore up the fragile wall with plywood and attach the foundation to the house's frame—a retrofit called “stud and nail.”

A house in Fillmore lies askew after the 1994 Northridge earthquake, having slid off its foundation.

(Joe Policy/Los Angeles Times)

Officials in California have been trying to raise awareness of homes with story and crawl defects for many years.

Now, they're once again asking homeowners to seriously consider whether their home suffers from this defect — and are offering money to help them pay for seismic retrofits.

Grants are available to owners of soft-story homes

This month, California's Residential Mitigation Program opened applications to homeowners for grants of up to $13,000 to address single-family home retrofits. People can apply at the following website: groundgroundsoftstory.com.

Receiving the maximum grant amount will pay about half the cost of a typical retrofit, which averages between $20,000 to $25,000. Repairing a single-family home that has been severely damaged can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars or more.

But if this type of retrofit becomes more popular, “I imagine we'll start to see prices come down,” says Janiele Maffei, a structural engineer and chief mitigation officer for the California Seismological Commission.

Funded by a $5 million grant from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the idea is to get homeowners to rehabilitate their homes now, before the next devastating earthquake strikes.

Low cost of retrofits

The cost of soft-floor retrofits to single-family homes has actually declined in recent years. FEMA published pre-designed retrofit plans in 2019 that allow many homeowners to implement seismic strengthening without a structural engineer, saving a few thousand dollars.

Officials began allowing residents to apply for the one-story single-family home retrofit grants in early 2023. At that time, only residents of 82 zip codes in Los Angeles, Pasadena, San Francisco, Oakland and Berkeley were eligible. The initial grant window has been open for about a month.

But as of October 15, the program is open for applications again, and this time it will not close until the funds run out. And many more homeowners — in 209 ZIP codes — are eligible to apply, across a wide swath of Southern California, from Long Beach to Santa Clarita, from Redondo Beach to Pomona, and from Glendale to East Los Angeles to West Covina.

In Northern California, eligibility has also expanded to include zip codes in cities such as Fremont, Hayward, San Leandro, Livermore, Pleasanton and Alameda.

A soft-story single-family home was damaged in the 2014 6.0 Napa earthquake. This home has living space above a garage – a known seismic flaw among homes built before 2000.

(Federal Emergency Management Agency)

Help for homeowners with crawl spaces

For homes with crawl spaces, retrofits are generally simpler and cheaper compared to those with a soft story. Homeowners with crawl spaces are eligible for grants of up to $3,000 through the Earthquake Brace + Bolt program. (Up to $7,000 in additional funds is available to homeowners with annual income of $87,360 or less.)

Old homes in California can slide or have their foundations collapse in the event of an earthquake. Structural engineer Janiele Maffei advises on the precautions that should be taken to modernize these homes.

The cost to retrofit homes with a crawl space, on average, is about $5,200.

People can sign up to be notified when registration opens again in January at the earthquake website bracebolt.com. The last time registration was open earlier this year, grants were available to homeowners in 815 ZIP codes, with 300 new ZIP codes added to the eligibility list. Besides the Southern California metro area and the San Francisco Bay Area, other eligible areas are in places like San Diego, Palm Springs, Santa Barbara, Monterey and Salinas.

This photo from August 2015 shows how the blue house, right, with the faulty wall — which was retrofitted by attaching it to the foundation and shoring it up — survived the 2014 Napa earthquake. The yellow, non-retrofitted house was damaged when it slid from its foundation.

(Gianelli Maffei/California Earthquake Authority)

More than 27,000 homes have been rehabilitated using Brace + Bolt grants since the program's inception a decade ago.

New financing is coming for apartments with soft floors

The California Housing Mitigation Program also hopes to launch a new program to provide financial assistance to owners of smaller apartment buildings — between five and 10 units — that have a soft story defect. They are apartment buildings that have parking, garages or retail on the ground floor, with flimsy supports that can collapse when an earthquake shakes side-to-side.

Why can apartments collapse in an earthquake? Flimsy earth walls used in parking lots, garages or stores can collapse in the event of an earthquake, and are called “soft-storey” buildings, explains USGS geophysicist Ken Hodnut.

Sometime in 2025, officials hope to offer grants to apartment owners in cities that already have mandatory retrofit codes for such buildings. Maffei said the initial focus will be on areas with socially vulnerable populations.

Apartments with soft floors have been fatal in past earthquakes. During the 6.7-magnitude Northridge earthquake in 1994, 16 people died when their apartments collapsed. Soft-storey apartments also suffered fatal collapses in San Francisco during the 1989 6.9 Loma Prieta earthquake.

The Soft Story Apartment Grant Program received $40 million from a Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) grant.

Southern California cities that have passed mandatory soft-touch retrofit ordinances include Los Angeles, Torrance, Pasadena, Santa Monica, Culver City, West Hollywood and Beverly Hills. In Northern California, San Jose just passed a mandatory soft-top order, joining other cities like San Francisco, Oakland, Berkeley, Fremont and Mill Valley.

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