The most vulnerable buildings in Los Angeles are not where you expect them to

The researchers then used data from the school’s sensors to see how much impact would be expected from Los Angeles buildings during future earthquakes. Kohler says an earthquake of similar magnitude to Ridgecrest could cause tall buildings in western Los Angeles and the canyon to shake four times more than a building in downtown Los Angeles. In a 52-storey building, this means that the upper floors may swing back and forth by as much as 3 feet, and twice that amount could move during a stronger 7.6 earthquake. This significant influence may lead to stressing the structural integrity of a building, especially for those that were built decades ago during the era of less stringent seismic building codes.

“The building will not necessarily collapse during these types of amplitude shaking, but significant cracking or bending may occur in and around the multiple beam column connections or abutment frame connections. These impacts may not be visible, and buildings will be significantly weakened and not prepared to withstand the next earthquake,” says Kohler. “.

Kohler says that when seismic waves from an earthquake enter the soft sediments that fill the basin below Los Angeles, the waves slow down and build up their energy, creating larger waves of amplitude that lead to stronger vibration. But the study did not find a relationship between the depth of the basin and the amount of wobble in the buildings. Kohler believes that sediments transported from hills and mountains by ancient rivers that once flowed into the larger Los Angeles Basin may affect building vibration today, as may the removal of oil and gas from geological deposits during the 20th century.

“I suspect the locations, depths, and extent of these deep sediments associated with the Los Angeles River and aquifers, partly delineated by fault sites, may play a role in seismic amplification patterns,” says Koller. “We are testing this idea, but we haven’t published any work on it.” She adds that discovering this will take more sensors in those areas.

Benson Ching, a professor of civil engineering at the University of California, San Diego, who was not involved in the study, agrees that it’s a good idea to learn more about the land beneath the skyscrapers of Los Angeles. “Maybe we should revisit the seismic zoning map, used in the building code, to see if any changes are warranted, especially in the Los Angeles basin area,” says Cheng. “It might be a good idea to investigate. But we cannot reach a quick conclusion that these buildings will be unsafe in the event of earthquakes.”

Predicting how buildings will respond to earthquakes is very difficult because seismic energy flows around the Los Angeles Basin almost like a liquid wave, accumulates in some areas and disperses in others, depending on the type of rocks and other geological features they encounter underground, says Robert Graves, a seismologist. At the United States Geological Survey in Pasadena, California. “You can direct the waves through different parts of the basin,” he says.

Graves says the new study is important because it uses a lot of new data from the sensor network, which has brought accelerometers much closer than networks in other seismic hotspots on the West Coast, such as the Bay Area or Seattle. “The key is to find some predictive features or measures,” he says. “Hopefully, if it worked out in one basin, in Los Angeles, the kinematics would also be applied in San Francisco or Seattle. Earthquakes don’t happen very often, so the chance of getting truth data comes out sporadically.”

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