L.A. County's proposed earthquake rules would require certain older concrete buildings in unincorporated areas, and those owned by the county, to be retrofitted.
Los Angeles County took the first step Tuesday toward a mandatory earthquake retrofit order for the types of concrete buildings that collapsed catastrophically in the devastating earthquakes that shook Turkey and Syria, causing many of theThe Board of Supervisors voted unanimously to ask officials to prepare new rules that would require “non-ductile” concrete buildings owned by the county, as well as any located in unincorporated areas, to be retrofitted.
The deficiency involves an inadequate configuration of steel reinforcing bars in the concrete frames of buildings — many of which were built in the post-World War II building boom across California and around the world. The flaw of insufficient steel reinforcement in the concrete frame allows concrete to explode out of columns when shaken in an earthquake, a prelude to a catastrophic collapse.
A number of these non-ductile concrete buildings collapsed in the 1971 Sylmar and 1994 Northridge earthquakes, which were magnitude 6.6 and 6.7, respectively. The same type of non-ductile flaw led to the collapse of freeways in the Northridge earthquake and the 1989 Loma Prieta quake in the San Francisco Bay Area.
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