Across the State of California, seismically unsound buildings are gaining the political attention needed to create and enforce regulations to address risk. Last week, the City of Los Angeles announced a policy to map all the deficient buildings within the City. Both San Francisco and Santa Monica have passed measures aimed to improve the seismic resilience of their residential building stock.

The aim of the measure to take building stock inventories is to identify the buildings that would benefit from structural improvements such as a seismic retrofit or rehabilitation design. Buildings that are especially 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 are wood-framed and soft story as there is no state-wide master database. This concern for the public has prompted City officials in the City of Santa Monica and Los Angeles to appoint engineers to identify and catalogue apartment buildings that are susceptible to structural failure or collapse in a future, major temblor (see an article about Santa Monica's initiative here). Under the new plan in Los Angeles, they will pick up where they left off many years ago with their formal building inventory. By mapping out which buildings are at risk and require improvements to mitigate the hazards associated with the soft story, the safety of the building's inhabitants and the building'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 more than 3 stories tall with more than 5 residential units constructed prior to 1978 are already subject to San Francisco's mandatory seismic retrofit ordinance. The City of Los Angeles may soon implement similar regulations for the mandatory retrofitting of soft-story and/or other vulnerable buildings if the political backing holds strong. Other California cities, including Oakland and numerous other East Bay cities are making similar plans for a retrofit ordinance.