Page 19 - Yucaipa Valley Water District

Likewise, several of the historic structures lining Santa
Monica’s Third Street Promenade and downtown area
Striving for were revitalized in conjunction with seismic retrofits to
Resiliency make them safer, including the 1875 Rapp Saloon, the
1891 Whitworth Block building, and the 1893 Keller Block,
which underwent a retrofit and restoration in 1987 that
The following California cities and helped kick off the Third Street Promenade
counties are among those that xliii
revitalization.
have adopted or are considering

ordinances requiring seismic
Resilience isn’t just good for society, it’s good for business,
retrofits of buildings proven to be
the U.S. Green Building Council aptly stated.
vulnerable to damage in a quake.

San Francisco “Those who incorporate resilience into their buildings,
Berkeley business processes and communities stand to fare better
Richmond in a disaster, responding more quickly and recovering
Freemont more fully,” the organization found. “They are also able to
San Jose leverage disaster into positive change, using the disruption
xliv
Alameda as a springboard into a brighter future.”
Santa Clara County
Los Angeles County Cities Take Action
Los Angeles
Beverly Hills Driven by a concern about the desolation that could come
Santa Monica from a major quake, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti in
West Hollywood 2015 pushed for the nation’s most sweeping earthquake
retrofit laws, requiring seismic fortification of pre-1978
wood-frame soft-story buildings and pre-1977 non-ductile concrete structures, which – without proper
strengthening – would be vulnerable to collapse during and/or after an earthquake. This came on the
heels of retrofit ordinances in San Francisco, Berkeley, and other cities.

Since then, several municipalities throughout California have followed suit with retrofit ordinances of
their own, including Santa Monica, which in 2017 adopted the nation’s most comprehensive ordinance
for not only soft-story and non-ductile concrete buildings, but unreinforced masonry and steel moment
xlv
frame structures as well.

The City of Long Beach, like many other major California municipalities, is considering commencing a
Seismic Resilience Initiative study and has completed a yearlong RFP process to bring on board a
consulting engineering firm to complete the first phase of the Long Beach Building Resiliency Program
which is tasked with identifying the city’s seismically vulnerable buildings. Since the 1933 Long Beach
earthquake, the city has been in the forefront of seismic legislation in California, beginning with the
inception of the Field Act (requiring retrofits of vulnerable school buildings), and Riley Act (requiring all
cities and counties to establish departments to regulate building construction.
xlvi

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Yucaipa Valley Water District - March 8, 2018 - Page 19 of 40