Quake vulnerability of 'soft-story' apartments in state still widespread - Los Angeles Times: "Fifteen years after the Northridge earthquake exposed the dangers of certain 'soft-story' apartments, only about 800 of the 20,000 such structures in Los Angeles have been retrofitted, according to city records.
The pancake collapse of the Northridge Meadows apartment complex, which killed 16 people, was one of the most dramatic images of the Northridge earthquake on Jan. 17, 1994. But despite concern at the time that these multi-unit buildings with weak ground floors posed a critical risk, progress inspecting and fixing these older buildings has been slow."
-------------
During the recent housing boom, many older apartment buildings were converted to condominiums. So that means that we probably have a whole bunch of condo buildings with soft ground floors--meaning that they are prone to collapse in the next quake. And guess who is stuck with that problem? If you said, "The unit owners," you win the steak knives.
Thanks to Fred Pilot for the link--and for the observation that this is one more reason attorney Tyler Berding is probably right about the physical obsolescence of many CIDs.
1 comment:
Many thanks for this post, Evan, and to Fred Pilot for forwarding the article. As you know, our base in northern California is a very active seismic zone. We have seen some examples of this construction already and we intend to investigate other older condo conversions to determine whether the "soft story" problem is present in any of them. We concur that this could add to the already difficult issues facing conversion buyers. We'll let you know what we find out.
Tyler
Post a Comment