A worry apartment owners may face when doing earthquake retrofits, major renovations or repairs is the impact that construction could have on their tenants — and whether their Tenant Habitability Plan will add significant expenses to their project.
Extra costs might include precautions to minimize impacts, such as establishing alternative parking […]
Many older homes and apartment buildings contain lead and asbestos. Owners sometimes downplay the health hazards these substances pose to humans and the environment alike, and feel tempted to bypass the rules by removing these contaminants undercover — hoping that no one finds out.
Failure to comply with the law on […]
City of San Diego officials are getting serious about resilience, and they’re turning to the community for feedback on what that means.
In 2020, the city completed a Climate Change Hazard Vulnerability Assessment, which has served as the foundation for a new plan – Climate Resilient SD – to ensure that […]
Humans, in ancient times, believed earthquakes were caused by huge animals, angry gods and giants.
Current folklore attempts to find causal links between moon phases and earthquakes, but this theory has been debunked by science.
What we do know is that earthquakes are frequent in California, and that Southern California is long […]
Demolition of the “old” Long Beach City Hall – dedicated on the day of the nation’s bicentennial on July 4, 1976 – is underway. By the end of the year, it could be completely razed.
Deemed a threat in a major earthquake, the 14-story tower was closed in 2019 due to […]
Seven thousand.
That’s how many buildings have been retrofitted for earthquake safety since Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti in 2015 signed a historic law requiring seismic fortification for 12,558 older soft-story structures in the city.
I joined the mayor at an apartment building retrofitted by Optimum Seismic to celebrate this milestone, which […]
Luigi De Sarno was part of a team of advisors brought in to help the government of Haiti following the 7.0 magnitude earthquake in 2010 that killed more than 200,000 people.
He and other representatives of the World Bank met several times with the Ministries of Health and Public Works, recommending […]
Insurance carriers track the pulse of California’s earthquake liabilities, just as they monitor trends in fire, flood, hurricanes, and other hazards that can cause claims to be filed for property damage, injury or death.
Warnings from seismologists that California is long overdue for a major earthquake has property owners and insurance […]
Increasing density of urban areas and climate change are leaving many communities more vulnerable than ever to earthquakes, fire, flood, and hurricanes.
In 2020, the United States experienced a record-breaking level of disasters leaving a billion dollars or more in damages, according to the National Centers for Environmental Information. The costliest […]
Apartments and other buildings in the Los Angeles region, sit in the crosshairs of what experts agree could be the nation’s worst earthquake disaster.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency uses Geographic Information System technology to estimate physical, economic, and social impacts of disasters such as earthquakes. This nationally applied standard, called […]
