Archinect - News

California begins offering $13,000 for single-family seismic retrofits

2024-10-22T17:22:00-04:00

The State of California has announced a new wave of grants through its Earthquake Soft-Story (ESS) program that will offer homeowners small $13,000 grants to be used in seismic retrofits.

The grants apply to qualified homeowners in the San Francisco Bay Area and Los Angeles and could be a potential windfall for architects with expertise in such projects. Only one- and two-story homes with dwelling space above a garage are eligible, according to MSN. Seismic events in L.A. County in 2024 recently surpassed numbers that haven't been seen in decades.

Lizard tails are effective at producing building collapse prevention strategies, Spanish scientists find

2024-05-20T19:30:00-04:00

A group of researchers from the Polytechnic University of Valencia say they have discovered a means for protecting buildings from structural collapse. In a new set of building science experiments conducted in June 2023, they carefully studied animal neurobiology.

El País tells us: “The team of scientists and engineers has devised a hierarchy-based collapse isolation system, the key to which lies in the implementation of structural fuses, which allow the building to be segmented in the event of a failure. According to Adam, this design philosophy is similar to fuse-based protection of electrical networks. His technique has been validated by a test on a real building — 15 by 12 meters in plan, with two 2.6-meter-high floors — using prefabricated reinforced concrete. It is the first solution of its kind to be tested and verified at full scale.”

The Endure project recently made the cover of the journal Nature. Engineering professor Antoni Cladera (who did not participate in the study) t...

At least 200,000 residential structures in New York City are at risk of seismic damage: NYT

2024-04-11T17:38:00-04:00

The five boroughs are home to more than 200,000 multifamily buildings made with un-reinforced brick and built from the mid-1800s to the 1930s, according to a city hazard plan. Many rowhouses across the city neighborhoods fall into this category. Such masonry cannot bend or flex during an earthquake and would instead break or crumble. A strong earthquake could cause some buildings of this type to collapse.

Last week’s 4.8 magnitude tri-state quake wasn’t nearly as strong as the (estimated) 5.5 magnitude incident that occurred on August 10, 1884, and would have caused $4.7 billion worth of damage to the modern city, according to the New York Times.

Experts have warned that the risk posed to New York City, even after its amended 1995 building codes called for “seismic gaps” between buildings, remains at least faintly plausible.

A 2002 Times article on earthquake preparedness in the Big Apple states the probability of a magnitude 6.0 or higher event occurring even once in the next 19,500 years is still "unlikely."

The USGS-documented sinking of buildings in Manhattan, meanwhile, is happening at a rate of between 1 to 2 millimeters per year.

Strict building codes prevented a larger catastrophe in earthquake-prone Taiwan

2024-04-03T19:22:00-04:00

The 7.4 magnitude that struck eastern Taiwan yesterday has provided evidence as to how the country’s reputedly strong building codes and regulations prevented significant losses of life and property 25 years after another tragic seismic event led to widespread change.

"Taiwan’s earthquake preparedness is among the most advanced in the world," Stephen Gao, a seismologist and professor at Missouri University of Science and Technology, told the AP. "The island has implemented strict building codes, a world-class seismological network, and widespread public education campaigns on earthquake safety."

This state of preparedness is credited to government action following a September 1999 earthquake with a magnitude of 7.7 that caused 2,400 deaths and damage to over 50,000 buildings on the island. Another factor within this are business and governmental conditions inside Taiwan, which is worth comparing to Turkey's response to an earthquake that occurred there the month before the same year...

Shigeru Ban and the Voluntary Architects' Network pitch in on earthquake relief efforts in western Japan

2024-01-11T16:58:00-05:00

Shigeru Ban and the Voluntary Architects' Network (VAN) are once again in action deploying their patented Paper Partition System in the wake of the recent 7.7 magnitude quake that struck western Japan in the early hours of New Year’s Day.

The indoor privacy system that the Pritzker Prize winner first devised in the late 1980s and deployed later in response to the 1995 Kobe earthquake was installed recently at a gymnasium in Kanazawa, Ishikawa Prefecture. The Prefecture is currently home to an estimated 26,000 shelter seekers, according to local reports.

Image courtesy Voluntary Architects' Network via Facebook

The VAN’s response is thus critical towards bolstering local relief efforts in the area that continues to suffer damage as a product of the more than 60 smaller quakes that have continued as recently as two days ago — potentially displacing hundreds or even thousands more.

Image courtesy Voluntary Architects' Network via Facebook

A TED talk featuring Ban’s description of the t...

Schools and communities in the Pacific Northwest hope for improved building code standards for earthquake preparedness

2024-01-04T08:35:00-05:00

Current seismic codes require public buildings to be built strong enough so they don’t fall down in a quake. Now, some emergency preparedness advocates want to raise the bar. Not only should essential buildings resist collapse in a strong earthquake, but also newly constructed schools, in particular, should be built so in the immediate aftermath they can be counted on to serve as relief centers.

The article mentions the AIA Oregon chapter’s efforts to push lawmakers towards adopting more stringent building codes in preparation for a cataclysmic 9.0 Cascadia earthquake. Some relatively cheaper proactive measures, such as tsunami towers, are being enacted, but the 1,000 or so schools thought to be at risk for collapse statewide just a few years ago still need to enact drastic changes whose costs are proving too much of a burden for local administrators to get behind.

“A lot of districts have been building schools and not doing this,” local Portland-based architect Jay Raskin explains. “Every year we go without requiring that schools be capable of being used as shelters is a year we miss providing shelter for the surrounding neighborhoods during a Cascadia earthquake.”

Another vote on the Oregon legislation is not expected until at least 2025.

A new LA Times map shows 6,000 structures in need of seismic retrofit across Los Angeles

2023-12-18T12:17:00-05:00

The LA Times recently debuted a useful map of seismic retrofit projects in major sections of the city months after official updates to the building code were enacted to address risks posed to soft-story and non-ductile concrete structures before 2033.

The map was made by surveying available records from Los Angeles, West Hollywood, Santa Monica, and Pasadena. More than 6,000 of the 16,000 buildings in the dataset are categorized as still requiring retrofits, including many homes and offices built before 1996.

Clusters of buildings in Pasadena’s Old Town and near the California Institute of Technology, most sections of Downtown LA and its nearby constituents (Koreatown, Jefferson Park, and Pico-Union), and a large swath of Hollywood between Beverly Hills and La Brea Avenue contain the majority of what has yet to receive seismic retrofits. The year ahead should see a decisive turnaround, as 60% of the yet-to-be-retrofitted soft-story buildings in the city are mandated to be completed ...

Shigeru Ban responds to the humanitarian disaster in Morocco

2023-09-28T16:53:00-04:00

Shigeru Ban and the Voluntary Architects’ Network have shared news of their delivery of several Paper Log House prototypes in Morocco in response to the devastating 6.8 magnitude earthquake that displaced over 30,000 people recently, according to disaster response statistics assembled by the UN.

This is the third such deployment in the past four months and follows Ban’s contribution to the Turkish response effort after the February earthquake that destroyed more than 160,000 structures there and in Syria. The National Architecture School of Marrakech is helping Ban coordinate the delivery of the shelters, which were first used following the 1995 earthquake in Kobe, Japan.

Photo: Voluntary Architects' Network via Facebook

The structures used this year in Turkey offer slightly more permanent accommodations than past prototypes and can be constructed in just three days, with another ten or so days required for pre-installation preparation.

Photo: Voluntary Architects' Network via Face...

Conservation expert cautions: Narratives about traditional earthen architecture and the Moroccan earthquake are flawed

2023-09-18T14:37:00-04:00

The rush to blame the destruction that ensued in the wake of this month’s devastating 6.9 magnitude earthquake in Morocco on rammed earth and the region's other traditional earthen construction methods is a flawed conjecture, according to an explanation penned recently by University of York lecturer Louise Cooke.

In an article featured in The Conversation over the weekend, Cooke refuted some of what she calls inaccuracies latent in the popular media narrative about the country’s traditional architectures, namely that their structural designs make them susceptible to collapses during seismic events. She says the popular consensus about traditional architecture is a mischaracterization, adding that the disaster’s true culprit lies in a hastened shift away from age-old building and maintenance methods caused by outside influence from modern Western design.

“In the immediate aftermath of an earthquake, it is common for local building cultures to be blamed for their own destruction,” the...

Moroccan heritage sites severely impacted by recent earthquake

2023-09-12T17:28:00-04:00

Several Unesco World Heritage sites have been severely damaged by the recent earthquake in Morocco. [...] As the death toll climbs, so too will revelations of damaged heritage sites, as Morocco’s fragile patrimony—especially in less accessible rural areas—bears the brunt of the earthquake alongside the nation.

Following the 6.8-magnitude earthquake that struck Morocco's Marrakesh–Safi region on September 8, the assessment of devastation — both human and cultural — continues.

As The Art Newspaper reports, several significant heritage sites have been severely damaged or almost entirely destroyed, including the 12th-century Great Mosque of Tinmal as well as Marrakesh's historic Kharbouch and Kutubiyya mosques.

Authorities have confirmed over 2,900 deaths, with thousands more injured and without shelter.

Istanbul's conservators are scrambling to protect heritage sites from disaster

2023-06-02T11:48:00-04:00

Conservators in Istanbul are racing to safeguard scores of at-risk heritage sites in the wake of Turkey’s deadliest earthquake in modern history, bracing for the probability of an even greater disaster in a city straddling an active faultline.

Consequences of incumbent President Recep Erdoğan’s culture wars and the fallout of a “real-estate mentality that supersedes cultural heritage” have become unnecessary obstacles for volunteers who are up against the impossible challenge of securing 35,000 heritage sites around Istanbul seismically.

February’s deadly Turkey-Syria earthquake primarily affected the country’s easternmost provinces, but still, the metro’s location north of the precarious North Anatolian Fault means the seismic “triage” measures being performed now might not be in place in time for a similar quake scientists say has a very strong likelihood of occurring within the next two decades.

San Francisco has over 3,400 concrete buildings at risk of seismic collapse

2023-05-25T17:00:00-04:00

Famous historic sites, low-income apartments and Twitter's headquarters all appear on a previously unpublished draft list of 3,407 concrete buildings in San Francisco that may be at high risk of collapse in a major earthquake, according to a copy of a city government document obtained by NBC News through a public records request.

The city says the list is still a “preliminary draft inventory” of at-risk concrete structures, some of which were built after 2000, according to NBC. Who will actually pay for the mass retrofits still hasn’t been hammered out yet, leaving many to speculate as to its near-term feasibility. Some engineers expect the compliance effort to take decades. Current U.S. Geological Survey predictions state the Bay Area faces a 20% risk of suffering a 7.5 magnitude quake or higher in the next 30 years.

Twitter's potential move out of its historic Market Street headquarters (which is also one of the buildings on the list) is starting to make a lot more sense.

World’s tallest full-scale building earthquake test takes place at UC San Diego

2023-05-10T15:09:00-04:00

UC San Diego has hosted the tallest full-scale seismic building test on an earthquake simulator. The LEVER Architecture-designed 10-story building, made of cross-laminated timber, was tested on what the organizers say is the world’s largest outdoor shake table.

Image credit: UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering

Tests on the structure began in late April, where a shake table simulated earthquake motions recorded during prior earthquakes covering a range of magnitude 4 to magnitude 8 on the Richter scale. The range also included various iterations of the 6.7 magnitude Northridge Earthquake which struck Los Angeles in 1994.

Image credit: UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering

The shake table used in the test has been designed to “reproduce the full 3D ground motions that occur during earthquakes” including a movement of up to six degrees of freedom. Atop the table is what the team has dubbed the Tallwood building: A 116-foot-tall cross-laminated timber structure roughly one-fifth...

Los Angeles publishes list of 33 county-owned structures most at-risk in an earthquake

2023-03-30T11:49:00-04:00

In the wake of last month’s devastating earthquake in Turkey and Syria, Los Angeles County has identified some 33 important structures it says are the most at risk during a major seismic event of that magnitude.

Last week, the Board of Supervisors published a list of at-risk properties owned by the county that must be upgraded in line with modern standards over the next ten years, according to KTLA.

The county has already mandated changes to its building codes that call for similar upgrades to all non-ductile concrete high-rises and soft-story residential structures before the year 2033. Officials are wary of the “Big One” — a magnitude 7.8 or above quake — that would kill as many as 1,800 people and destroy an estimated 2,000 structures in the area per the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS).

“We never thought that spending the money on retrofitting these buildings was worth the risk,” U...

Los Angeles updates its building codes in wake of deadly Turkey-Syria earthquake

2023-03-02T12:30:00-05:00

Los Angeles County’s Board of Supervisors voted Wednesday to approve a motion requiring all non-ductile, concrete high-rise structures in LA County to be given seismic retrofits within the next ten years.

The motion applies to all incorporated communities in the county and must be codified by the directors of public works within six months according to the supervisors. The update comes as multiple LA media outlets reported widespread weak spots across the region in response to the February 6th Turkey-Syria Earthquake that killed more than 50,000.

Under the updated building codes, current building owners have a ten-year time period in which to submit structural evaluation assessments to the agency. Properties will either be retrofitted or demolished according to the language put forth by Supervisors Holly Mitchell and Hilda Solis.

“The county should follow the example of surrounding jurisdict...

The toll on heritage sites in Turkey and Syria following the February earthquakes is staggering

2023-02-28T12:28:00-05:00

The catastrophic events have devastated countless heritage structures, archaeological areas and religious sites, many still active places of worship, across an area so vast that it encompasses ten Turkish provinces and impacts more than 13 million people. Though less extensively reported, damage to heritage sites is most significant in the southernmost province of Hatay. The city centre of Antakya [...] has been almost completely flattened.

The World Bank estimates the total physical damage in Turkey to be approximately $34.2 billion. The Gaziantep Castle, a 2nd-century fortress later expanded under Emperor Justinian, and Aleppo's ancient Citadel in neighboring Syria are perhaps the most significant historic sites to be heavily damaged.

All told, there were at least 173,000 structures destroyed or damaged across Turkey as a result of the outmoded building codes and blatant corruption within the construction industry.

For their part, UNESCO says they are “mobilizing [...] experts, in conjunction with its partners such as ICOMOS, to establish a precise inventory of the damage, if there is any, to safeguard these sites with the cooperation of national authorities, while being aware that their priority at this stage is emergency disaster, rescue and relief.”

IKEA Foundation supports Better Shelter’s deployment of 5,000 modular shelters in response to earthquake in Turkey and Syria

2023-02-24T11:34:00-05:00

Swedish nonprofit Better Shelter has announced the provision of 5,000 emergency shelters in Turkey following the major earthquake that has so far killed over 47,000 people across the country and neighboring Syria. The shelters were made possible through a EUR 10 million (approximately USD 10.5 million) donation by the IKEA Foundation.

Better Shelter's modular units deployed in Hatay, Turkey after the recent earthquake. Image credit: Alaaddin Seyitisa for Better Shelter

“The generous support provided by the IKEA Foundation will give crucial protection to many thousand people in this difficult time,” said Better Shelter’s managing partner Johan Karlsson in a statement. “We are proud to support our humanitarian partners in Syria and Türkiye working day and night to help survivors. We now ask businesses to step forward and join our efforts to support even more people who have lost everything.”

Better Shelter's modular units deployed in Hatay, Turkey after the recent earthquake. Image cre...

Turkey issues arrest warrants for building designers in the wake of deadly earthquake

2023-02-13T16:42:00-05:00

Arrest warrants have been issued in Turkey in response to the devastating earthquake that killed more than 34,000 people across the shared border with Syria last Monday.

The BBC writes that a total of 113 warrants were issued to individuals within the country, reportedly including architects, engineers, and building contractors, over their supposed role in constructing the more than 25,000 buildings which failed or were damaged during the magnitude 7.8 tremor and subsequent aftershocks.

The country’s Vice President, Fuat Oktay, also announced the establishment of ten special investigative units spread throughout Turkey’s most impacted provinces. The punitive process comes after years of so-called amnesties for contractors that were granted, in some cases, to provide for housing construction in waves and most recently before the 2018 general election.

Previously on Archinect: Devastating 7.8 and 7.5 magnitude earthquakes hit Turkey and Syria

In an essay for the Sunday Times, journalis...

Turkey’s outdated building codes exacerbated earthquake destruction

2023-02-10T12:23:00-05:00

Why did so many buildings fall down? [...] [Alanna Simpson] says the building codes in Turkey were updated again in 2018. But the country's "legacy buildings" are still vulnerable, and that goes for much of the rest of the world, too, she says. "It's a global problem."

Of the more than 3,000 Turkish structures destroyed by Monday’s devastating earthquake, experts say the majority were concrete and masonry infill constructions built before Turkey updated its building codes in the wake of the 1999 İzmit earthquake that killed 17,000. A 2018 construction amnesty on 75,000 new buildings put even more people at risk.

The next quake could yield even more damage, as the Associated Press reported some 13 million apartments are not in compliance with modern standards.

The New York Times has a case study from one badly affected city here.

Devastating 7.8 and 7.5 magnitude earthquakes hit Turkey and Syria

2023-02-06T18:25:00-05:00

Reactions are pouring in following the devastating 7.8 and 7.5 magnitude earthquakes that struck Turkey and Syria early Monday morning.

There are no estimates available yet as to the number of structures either collapsed or damaged across the region, but a minimum of 3,400 lives have been lost as a result of the quake and a wave of very powerful aftershocks as concerns grow about both governments' ability to organize civil response efforts in the most impacted regions.

Building collapses have been reported in almost every community near the epicenter. Infrastructure damage appears to be significant as well.

Seismologists say the tremors that rocked Turkey and Syria are likely to be some of the deadliest this decade. Here is what scientists say happened beneath the earth's surface and what to expect in the aftermath https://t.co/vf37HkXHxQ pic.twitter.com/Tu3Kl76wxG
— Reuters (@Reuters) February 6, 2023

Turkey’s largest professional organization for architects and engineers, Türk Mü...

Resilient housing prototypes designed by Marvel Architects utilized a range of self-sustaining strategies to survive Hurricane Fiona

2022-09-23T12:00:00-04:00

After Hurricane Fiona tore through Puerto Rico on Sunday [Sept. 18], roads in the small mountain city of Caguas—hit with more than 20 inches of rain—were underwater. Landslides washed away some streets. As on the rest of the island, the electric grid went down, and it wasn’t clear how many homes had been damaged or destroyed. But in two new prototype homes, the electricity stayed on.

The prototypes are single-family homes completely off-grid with electricity and potable water. They were designed by New York City and Puerto Rico-based Marvel Architects and paid for by nonprofit Acacia Network. The homes utilize hurricane and seismic-resistant components, which include an insulated concrete panel system that has shown to be just as if not more effective against earthquakes than traditional concrete block construction. They also employ passive design strategies, allowing natural cross ventilation, heat extraction, and shade. In addition, the structures are modular so that they can adapt to a variety of locations and square footage.

Jonathan Marvel, the firm's founder, addressed the cost of these resilient homes with Fast Company's Adele Peters stating, "I don't want to say 'affordable,' because the average Puerto Rican income is below the level of poverty in the United States. So this is a housing system that's going to require assistance to build." Marvel added th...

Italy launches unprecedented anti-seismic plan to protect churches under threat from earthquakes

2022-03-30T14:51:00-04:00

Cathedrals, churches and basilicas across Italy are at risk of being razed by earthquakes that could strike at any moment. But the government is on a mission to protect some of the country’s most significant and vulnerable religious buildings from disastrous seismic shocks. A new national project backed with €250m from Italy’s multibillion-euro pot of EU Covid-19 recovery funding is unprecedented in Europe for its scale and reach, officials believe.

In one of Europe’s most earthquake-prone countries, the anti-seismic plan will allow the Italian culture ministry’s heritage safety department to distribute resources around the country that will mitigate the impact of future disasters. Straps and chains will be wrapped around bell towers and shock-absorbing blocks will be fixed to foundations. Project grants will be assigned to around 250 of the 840 structures owned by Italy’s Religious Buildings Fund. The ministry will assess buildings based on their historical value, importance for local communities, and vulnerability to damage.

This initiative is backed by Italy’s National Recovery and Resilience Plan, a €191.5 billion ($213.7 billion) investment package from the EU focused on addressing judicial, administrative, and energy reform. Funds are being channeled into “macro-projects” aimed at preserving and rejuvenating Italy’s cultural sector....

Tsunami Towers are about to spring up along the Pacific Northwest shorelines

2022-02-08T12:37:00-05:00

“The fact of the matter is that if a tsunami occurs tomorrow, we are going to lose all of our children,” said Andrew Kelly, the superintendent of the North Beach School District, which includes Ocean Shores. Mr. Kelly is one of a growing number of local officials who are calling for a network of elevated buildings and platforms along the Northwest coast that could provide an escape for thousands of people who might otherwise be doomed in the event of a tsunami.

Voters in the Washington state community of Ocean Shores will decide today on a measure that would install a pair of tsunami towers that can hold up to 800 people. Residents in the immediate shoreline region would have only ten minutes to escape potentially 100-foot waves propelled by a quake in the shallow offshore Cascadia subduction zone. The state estimates that around 70,000 people would be trapped in low-lying areas that have no bluffs or tall buildings which can be used as an escape.

The elevated steel platforms can be placed on top of parking garages, schools, and other structures to achieve a safe vertical distance from the inundation, although many such buildings in the area are not sufficiently seismic-ready to withstand magnitude 9.0 tremors. Washington has proposed 58 such towers, which cost around $3 million each to construct. To date, only two structures have been completed: one at a facility operated by Oregon State University, and the other, at Ocosta Elementary Sc...

OMA's new pedestrian bridge aims to lead the Mexican city of Jojutla on a path to the future

2021-09-23T19:48:00-04:00

Four years removed from one of the worst natural disasters in Mexico’s history, one small city in the state of Morelos is ready to bridge the chasm between past tragedy and future optimism thanks to the efforts of one New York firm.

Image courtesy of OMA New York

OMA has announced that it will be developing a new pedestrian bridge for the city of Jojutla to coincide with the anniversary of the devastating 2017 earthquake that left much of the city in shambles, and many of its residents to question the viability of the community long term.

Image courtesy of OMA New York

The project is the latest addition to OMA’s ongoing public space and resiliency push that includes a comprehensive post-Hurricane Sandy water use strategy for Hoboken, New Jersey, and the 11th Street Bridge Park development in Washington, DC.

Image courtesy of OMA New York/CCA, Model and Photography by CCA

The new bridge represents OMA New York’s contribution to the region’s ambitious recovery effort. Jojutla has beco...

Potential earthquake fault below planned Handel Architects-designed development in Hollywood raises new concerns

2020-07-22T15:17:00-04:00

An ongoing dispute between developers Millennium Partners and the regulatory agencies tasked with reviewing a $1 billion Handel Architects-designed mixed-use Hollywood Center development slated for sites surrounding the Capitol Records tower in Hollywood continues.

The development, which could bring more than 1,000 apartments and over 30,000 square feet of retail areas to sites surrounding the existing tower, has been dogged by concerns that a previously undiscovered earthquake fault lies near the project site.

Investigations by The Los Angeles Times have yielded new documents from the California Geological Survey that “strongly support the presence of an active ... fault strand entering the eastern Hollywood Center property,” according to a recent report.

Philip Aarons, a founder of Millennium Partners, countered the new findings in comments to The Los Angeles Times, claiming that “It is clear that the data relied upon by the state is significantly inferior in quality to the data...

Arup uses cloud computing to drastically cut structural design time for massive Istanbul hospital

2020-06-04T18:44:00-04:00

A recently inaugurated 1 million-square-meter hospital complex designed by Arup, Perkins and Will, and Yazgan Design Architecture for Rönesans Holding and Sojitz Corporation in Istanbul, Turkey is a feat of engineering and design coordination.

The building contains many interior courtyards that connect different wings and buildings together.

The massive Başakşehir Pine and Sakura City Hospital complex consists of three nearly identical hospital towers containing a main hospital facility, a psychiatric hospital, and a physical treatment and rehabilitation facility. The 2,682-bed hospital, developed as a public-private partnership, also includes six clinic buildings and five auxiliary facility buildings situated on the site.

While the massing, articulation, and materiality of the complex are relatively staid and straightforward, its what lies underneath these elements that truly defines the complex.

Overall view of the hospital complex.

For example, the hospital sits on 2,068 seismi...

Los Angeles is making decent progress retrofitting vulnerable "soft story" buildings

2019-11-23T09:00:00-05:00

An earthquake safety revolution is spreading along the streets and back alleys of Los Angeles, as steel frames and strong walls appear inside the first-story parking garages of thousands of apartment buildings. The construction is designed to fix one of the most dangerous earthquake risks: Wood apartment buildings collapsing because the skinny poles propping up parking at the ground level are not strong enough to withstand the shaking.

A building permit analysis conducted by The Los Angeles Times has found that over 27% of Los Angeles’s 11,400 "soft story" wood-frame apartments have been retrofitted since 2015 when the city passed an aggressive seismic upgrading ordinance.

"Soft story" buildings are built with an inadequate amount of shear resistance at their bases, a condition that can cause lower floor walls to snap or skew under the weight of the building above during seismic events.

Statewide earthquake alert system set to debut in California

2019-10-17T15:00:00-04:00

On Thursday, the California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services will unveil an app created by UC Berkeley that will give all Californians who download it on iOS and Android phones the chance to get earthquake early warnings from any corner of the state. Authorities will also begin issuing quake early warnings through the Wireless Emergency Alerts system, offering text message alerts even for people who have not downloaded the app.

The new warning system will alert Californians who have the app when an earthquake registering at level 3 on the Modified Mercalli Intensity Scale strikes nearby. The state will send out text message alerts over its Wireless Emergency Alerts system to anyone within range of a level 4 trembler.

Richard Allen, director of the Berkeley Seismology Lab that helped to develop the app, told The Los Angeles Times,“We cannot promise you a perfect system, [but] the system seems to be performing reasonably well.”

Dozens of buildings at UCLA, UC Berkeley pose "severe" earthquake risks

2019-08-31T09:00:00-04:00

Although no campus buildings were deemed to be in the worst category, “dangerous,” six at UC Berkeley and three at UCLA were found to have a “severe” risk to life. The remaining 62 at UC Berkeley and 15 at UCLA were said to have a “serious” risk to life, according to the first reports released this week in response to a UC Board of Regents 2017 directive calling on every campus to undertake a seismic risk assessment.

The list includes some of both campus's most historic and important buildings, including Berkeley's architecture building, Wurster Hall, and UCLA's Powell Library. A potential 2020 ballot measure and a recently-proposed California State Senate bill could provide funding to make necessary retrofits.

Throwaway cities vs seismic resilience: How American and Japanese buildings don't follow the same path towards earthquake safety

2019-07-31T19:18:00-04:00

Japan, through both government mandates and its engineering culture, builds stronger structures capable of withstanding earthquakes and being used immediately afterward. The United States sets a minimum and less protective standard with the understanding that many buildings will be badly damaged. The two approaches reflect different attitudes toward risk, the role of government and collective social responsibility.

The NYT takes a look at the drastically differing approaches (and ideologies behind them) towards earthquake safety in Japan compared with the United States and asks experts what would be at stake in the greater, urban picture in the anticipated event of a very big earthquake.

"The debate over whether to build more resilient buildings in the United States has been held largely out of public view, among engineers and other specialists," the piece goes. "But at stake is whether places like Silicon Valley, Seattle, Salt Lake City, San Francisco or Los Angeles might be forced to shut down after a direct hit — and for how long."

In this shake table test, the building model on the right is equipped with a seismic base isolation. Image: Valentin Shustov/Wikimedia Commons.

While strict regulations and advances in seismic engineering in Japan appear to favor base-isolated structures to allow tall buildings to resist the shaking ground, the regulation-averse American construction industry over...