But most local cities have not been able to require these vulnerable buildings to be retrofitted or torn down.Ĭities elsewhere have vulnerable buildings too. The region is particularly at risk of a major earthquake - three of the state’s most dangerous faults, the San Andreas, the San Jacinto and the Cucamonga, intersect in this region east of Los Angeles. While many California cities have taken action on old brick buildings - the city of Los Angeles in 1981 decreed that they be strengthened or demolished - there are a number of notable cities that have taken little action.Ī Times analysis of building and safety records in 2018 found that as many as 640 buildings in more than a dozen Inland Empire cities, including Riverside and San Bernardino, have been marked as dangerous - but remained unretrofitted despite decades of warnings. And you have instantaneous death,” said structural engineer Kit Miyamoto, CEO of Miyamoto International, of unretrofitted older brick buildings. If “you’re walking on the street, that brick wall will come right on top of you. On one Christchurch street, eight people died after huge chunks of unretrofitted brick buildings collapsed onto a bus, killing the driver and all but one passenger. Four died inside a older brick building, three died while running out of a building to escape, and 26 died as a result of a brick wall or facade collapsing on pedestrians or on top of vehicles. And in the 2014 magnitude 6 Napa earthquake, bricks came raining down on sidewalks in the city’s downtown, which could have been deadly projectiles had the earthquake struck during daylight hours.Īnd in New Zealand, which suffered a devastating earthquake in the city of Christchurch in 2011, there were dozens of deaths resulting from the collapse of a wall or a facade of an old brick building. The 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake brought down a San Francisco brick building’s fourth-story wall onto a parking lot below, leaving cars smashed and killing five people.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |