Billions in damage and thousands of injuries: A report charts the risks of the Vancouver earthquake – British Columbia

A staff report headed to Vancouver City Council next week has provided a snapshot of the extent of the devastation a major earthquake could wreak on the city.

The report looks at the seismic risks to which privately owned buildings in the city are exposed in the event of a major 7.2-magnitude earthquake.

It found that an earthquake of this magnitude could damage more than 6,100 buildings, displacing a third of the population and workers, and causing damage amounting to $17 billion.

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It found that a severe earthquake could also cause 1,350 people to be seriously injured and killed.

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Vancouver City Councilor Pete Fry described the contents of the report as “sobering.”

But he said there are no quick fixes to the problem either.

“Meaningfully addressing all the risks is going to take a lot of money and a lot of time, so this suggests the next steps will be more than just a piecemeal approach,” Fry said.

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“Clearly private property rights will prevail in many cases, and we can't force a lot of these changes — and even if we could, a lot of them would be very costly and create other kinds of difficulties.”

The report found that six Vancouver neighborhoods — home to much of the city's affordable housing — account for 65 per cent of the citywide risk. They include the West End, Downtown Eastside, Midtown, Kitsilano, Fairview and Mount Pleasant.

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It also identified five types of buildings, many built before 1990, that account for 80 percent of the risk, including high-rise apartments and concrete commercial buildings, residential and commercial buildings made of unreinforced masonry, and multi-unit residential buildings with wood frames.

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The report also stressed that in the event of a serious earthquake, entire neighborhoods in some of the city's densest parts may need to be cordoned off for long periods of time due to the risk of collapse, and that major streets may also face blockages.

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The city is calling for the development of a comprehensive earthquake risk reduction strategy for 2025.

“We have to take it in small bites. There's no way we can do this anytime soon or quickly, but we have to move toward it,” Fry said, adding that supporting the city's most dangerous areas will require help from regional authorities. and federal governments.

“Certainly a lot of these buildings will reach the end of their natural life and be replaced in due course, but we don't have the resources to do that at a wholesale level.”

Shaharia Alam, a civil engineering professor at the University of British Columbia's Okanagan campus, said the city has done a good job of identifying the buildings most at risk.

But tackling the problem will be a huge task, he said, and will require significant funding from senior levels of government and incentives for property owners.

“With limited funding, you need to identify and address the most critical and most vulnerable infrastructure,” he said.

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But he said officials could also benefit greatly from educating owners and construction workers to enable them to do smaller things that mitigate risks.

Allam suggested that the government fund training workshops on these types of promotions.

“It's a big undertaking, so if we can even take those small steps, it can greatly help the entire building stock and reduce the risk of building failure and save lives,” he said.

The report recommends that the city prioritize the highest risk building types and neighborhoods for retrofits and upgrades.

It also calls on the city to consider incentives and policy changes that could help building owners upgrade their properties while educating the public and creating programs to support voluntary improvements.

&Copy 2024 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.

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