Wood-framed, soft-story apartment buildings were an iconic part of Southern California’s rapid growth and car-crazed culture prior to 1980. With an open ground floor for parking, and dwelling units stacked above, they maximized land use at the expense of safety.
These structures have since been shown to be among a community’s […]
What are the odds a major earthquake will damage your San Diego apartment building, other commercial structure or even your home?
The Federal Emergency Management Agency’s Hazus modeling shows 120,000 buildings could suffer moderate to complete damage – with 8,000 beyond repair – and another 36,000 households could be displaced.
How does […]
New luxury apartment homes are sprouting up throughout Los Angeles – in the heart of Koreatown, Little Tokyo, in West Hollywood, Glendale, Culver City, even downtown. Amid all the new construction, the need for more affordable housing continues to grow.
From 2010 to 2019, the city lost thousands of homes considered […]
Two recent earthquakes — 6.4 magnitude earthquake and a 5.4 aftershock — have seriously shaken Humboldt County in less than two weeks. The quakes have damaged bridges, shaken homes off their foundations, left some 72,000 homes and businesses without electricity, and disrupted phone and internet service.
Only the nearby airport and […]
Three weeks of nearly nonstop rain in California dropped an estimated 32 trillion gallons of water on California, as nine atmospheric rivers barraged the state with record-breaking rainfall.[1] The steady stream of storms helped replenish reservoirs and built a snowpack 226% above normal for this time of year. […]
How many unsafe, soft-story apartment units are there in Orange County?
That question and similar ones about other counties in California led Optimum Seismic, Inc. and the U.S. Resiliency Council to team up with Esri, a leading mapping company, to combine resources to develop maps showing where thousands of potential soft […]
California has an average of about 21 earthquakes per day, 150 quakes per week, 7,750 a year.
Most are too small to be noticed, yet our state sees more seismic activity than virtually any other place in the world. California also experiences more earthquake damage than other parts of the U.S. […]
Where can potentially unsafe, soft-story apartment building be found in San Diego? And how many such buildings are there?
Those questions and similar ones about other counties in California led Optimum Seismic, Inc. and the U.S. Resiliency Council to team up with Esri, a leading mapping company, to combine resources to […]
Mayor Karen Bass praised the earthquake safety achievements of the City of Los Angeles during her inaugural speech on December 11, 2022.
Mayor Bass credited the achievements to former Mayor Eric Garcetti by telling him “Your legacy is large.” She noted Angelenos will be benefitting from Garcetti’s leadership in the years […]
