Orange County Lawmakers Call for Stricter Oversight of Older Buildings By Ali Sahabi

Orange County Lawmakers Call for Stricter Oversight of Older Buildings

BY ALI SAHABI

Should older structures be inspected for safety?

It’s a question being raised throughout the nation as building officials, elected officials and residents weigh similarities between high-rises in their cities and the ill-fated Champlain Towers, which collapsed and killed nearly 100 people on June 24.

The 12-story Florida condo tower was due for a 40-year inspection, required in Miami-Dade County.

Here in California — the heart of earthquake country — there is no law requiring routine inspections of the structural integrity of existing buildings based on their age. Some local lawmakers are thinking that should change.

“The Surfside building collapse was an incredible tragedy, one which must never happen again,” Sen. Dave Min (D-Irvine) told the Orange County Register. “As a representative of coastal communities in Orange County, I’m deeply concerned about the structural integrity of our beachfront properties. It is a failure of public policy that California does not require statewide review of aging buildings, as this would be an important tool to make determinations on resources and funding to help residents, buildings owners and local jurisdictions.”

Sen. Tom Umberg (D-Santa Ana) agreed.

“These tragedies make us wonder whether something like (Surfside) can happen in California, and what we can do to prevent it,” he told the Register. “With older buildings, there are several levels of concern: first the building codes. At the outset, when the building was approved for occupancy, did we have adequate structural requirements to make sure that the building is safe and habitable for the foreseeable future? And second, do we require some sort of regular inspections?”

Umberg noted, with irony, that laws have long been in place to conduct regular inspections of elevators and fire codes.

“Is there a gap?” he asked.

Known vulnerabilities

Explosive earthquakes can strike California’s major metropolitan areas many times in a lifetime.

From these experiences, we know the types of buildings will fall when that happens, and more importantly, why. • Imagine an apartment building built on stilts, with carports on the ground floor and residential units above. Seismic shocks can cause these buildings to rock violently and in many cases they eventually snap, with tragic results, as witnessed in the 1994 Northridge earthquake. • Nonductile concrete structures lack flexibility and can crumble and fall without proper fortification, leading to the collapse of freeway overpasses, parking structures and office towers.

• Tilt-up buildings can separate where the walls meet the roof and fall in or out on the many people who frequent these warehouse-style commercial and office spaces daily.

I’ve written many times about the types of buildings proven to be vulnerable to deadly collapse in an earthquake.

We know our vulnerabilities and how to fix them. But too many ignore those realities. Others mistakenly rationalize with themselves with the old mantra: I didn’t have damage before, so I won’t have damage when the next one strikes.

“You’re asking people to think about things that they don’t like to think about,” said Patrick Otellini, who was chief resilience officer for San Francisco in 2013, when the city passed the first large city retrofit ordinance in the nation. In a recent episode of The Resilience Advantage webinar series, he speaks proudly of the outcome of that law.

“Improving the homes of 120,000 San Franciscans is probably one of the single biggest efforts we’ve done,” he said.

The Resilience Advantage features video interviews and discussions with leading experts in structural engineering, seismology, architecture, business, construction, development, financing, government, law, and risk management. Visit www.optimumseismic.com/ the-resilience-advantage for more information or call Optimum Seismic at 833-978-7664.

About the Author: Ali Sahabi, a licensed General Engineering Contractor (GEC), is an expert in seismic resilience and sustainability. He is Co-Founder of Optimum Seismic, Inc., which has completed more than 3,500 seismic retrofitting and adaptive reuse projects for multifamily residential, commercial, and industrial buildings throughout California.