This week, LA Mayor Eric Garcetti formally proposed a plan to improve the City'sseismic safety and resilience by strengthening vulnerable buildingsand infrastructure most at risk during a major earthquake. The proposal mandates retrofits of all buildings that theCity has identified to be structurally weak, and also includes arecommendation to reinforce vulnerable telecommunications and watersupply systems.

The plan, known as Resilience by Design, is LA's most ambitiousstep yet toward protecting the city against major losses in case ofthe next major earthquake. The plan targets two structurallyweak building types: requiring retrofitting within 5 years forwood-framed, soft-story multifamily buildings built prior to 1980,and within 25 years for vulnerable non-ductile reinforced concretebuildings built before that date.

The City performed a comprehensive inventory of LA's soft-storybuildings that identified close to 15,000 buildings that fallunder the proposed ordinance. Upon approval of LA'sResilience by Design plan, owners of such buildings will benotified and required to engage an engineer to determine retrofit needs to improve structuralsafety in the applicable timeframe.