Across the State of California,seismically unsound buildings are gaining the political attentionneeded to create and enforce regulations to address risk. Last week, the City of Los Angeles announced a policy to map all the deficientbuildings within the City. Both San Francisco and Santa Monica havepassed measures aimed to improve the seismic resilience of theirresidential building stock.

The aim of the measure to take building stock inventories is toidentify the buildings that would benefit from structuralimprovements such as a seismic retrofit or rehabilitation design. Buildings that areespecially sensitive are wood frame buildings with a soft story,generally at the first floor retail or parking regions. Currently there is no easy way to identify which structures arewood-framed and soft story as there is no state-wide masterdatabase. This concern for the public has prompted City officialsin the City of Santa Monica and Los Angeles to appoint engineers to identify andcatalogue apartment buildings that are susceptible to structuralfailure or collapse in a future, major temblor (see an articleabout Santa Monica's initiative here). Under the new plan in Los Angeles, theywill pick up where they left off many years ago with their formalbuilding inventory. By mapping out which buildings are at risk andrequire improvements to mitigate the hazards associated with thesoft story, the safety of the building's inhabitants and thebuilding's overall sustainability is made a priority.

The City of San Francisco is a step ahead in their laws. All buildings that are wood framed with a soft story that are morethan 3 stories tall with more than 5 residential units constructedprior to 1978 are already subject to San Francisco's mandatoryseismic retrofit ordinance. The City of Los Angeles may soonimplement similar regulations for the mandatory retrofitting ofsoft-story and/or other vulnerable buildings if the politicalbacking holds strong. Other California cities, includingOakland and numerous other East Bay cities are making similar plansfor a retrofit ordinance.