PARKS’ PLACE-Could Los Angeles finally be embarking on an earthquake preparedness plan?
On Monday, Mayor Eric Garcetti released his "Resilience by Design" proposal that focuses on assessing and retrofitting pre-1980 soft story and non-ductile reinforced concrete buildings, and ensuring and preserving water delivery and telecommunications access in the aftermath of an earthquake.
The report also proposes adopting and implementing a voluntary rating system for building safety according to United States Resiliency Council (USRC) guidelines, creating a "Back to Business" program to expedite re-opening buildings for business and ensuring their safety should they experience any damage in an earthquake, having DWP create a seismic resilient plan and pipe network via a bond measure if necessary for funding.
In regards to retrofitting buildings, if this proposal is approved, within one year of passage, building owners of soft-story buildings would be required to submit documentation to the city that an acceptable retrofit has already been conducted on the building or that one is required. Retrofitting (or demolition if needed) would need to be completed within five years.
Building owners of non-ductile reinforced concrete buildings (according to the report, "most concrete buildings built before the implementation of the 1976 code"), if proposal is approved, would be required to submit documentation to the city that their buildings have been retrofitted, or need to be retrofitted within five years. Retrofitting (or demolition if needed) would need to be completed within 25 years to the standards set by the Basic Safety Objective of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) Standard 41 or equivalents if approved. Curious to see if you live in one of these concrete buildings? See the map the Los Angeles Times created from the University of California’s records.
So it looks like this program is dependent on property owners of pre-1980 soft story and non-ductile reinforced concrete buildings voluntarily submitting proof of the safety of their buildings.
As far as failure to comply with the proposed ordinance, the report states, "If the owner or other person in charge or control of the subject building fails to comply with any order issued by the Department pursuant to this Ordinance within any of the time limits, the Department may order that the entire building or a portion thereof be vacated and that the building or a portion thereof remain vacated until such order has been complied with. If compliance with such order has not been accomplished within 90 days after the date the building has been ordered vacated or such additional time as may have been granted by the Board, the Superintendent may order its demolition in accordance with the provisions of Section 8903 of Building Code."
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Some ideas the Mayor proposed for helping property owners undertake this massive and costly project include providing them with access to private lending sources, exempting owners from paying business tax for a period of time, and others.
It’s good to see some framework being laid down for a comprehensive program, but I think providing 30 years for retrofitting concrete buildings, which can be just as deadly as soft story buildings, is too long.
Comparatively, San Francisco just approved a mandatory soft story retrofitting law in September 2013. Although the program only addresses wood- frame buildings (no program is in place to retrofit concrete buildings), depending on the category of which the building falls, it looks like the wood-frame buildings must be retrofitted by September 2020.
According to a spokesman for the San Francisco Department of Building Inspection who spoke with the LA Weekly, it took them 10 years to finalize a plan. Given the pace some of our local government bodies work, you may have to multiply that time times two.
I’m no seismologist, and I’m not a former-pro-wrestler (photo above) appearing in a movie about "The Big One", so I can’t even begin to predict when or where the next major or minor earthquake will occur. I hope that this proposal will seriously move forward and won’t fall mercy to stall tactics.
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Since grand juries voted not to indict officers involved in the deaths of Eric Garner and Michael Brown (both unarmed), demonstrations and die-ins have taken place domestically and worldwide. Other shooting deaths at the hands of officers, including deaths of a 12-year-old boy in Cleveland, Ohio, a 34-year-old man in Phoenix, Arizona, and a 28-year-old man killed in a stairwell in New York, have inspired many to keep marching and protesting against police brutality.
Locally, the Mayor said the autopsy results of 25-year-old Ezell Ford, (a man who family members described as mentally challenged), who was unarmed and killed in an officer-involved shooting should be released before the end of the year.Monday, I appeared on Headline News to discuss these incidents and whether I believed if police officers were needlessly racist or biased.
Although I’ve been a Police Chief and a former officer, I’m a human first-then, today, and every day. I think sometimes we forget this.
We don’t breed officers. There is no laboratory to create the perfect officer. The man or woman you see in uniform grew up with many of the same biases, stereotypes, and anxieties as everyone else.
It’s important to note that police are getting paid to stereotype. If they didn’t stereotype on a daily basis, they would start with a blank slate everyday-their experience drives them to look at patterns.
It is unfortunate when people carry some of those stereotypes further than they should- perhaps when they’re off the clock and in their homes. The question remains whether officers can separate what they’ve been asked to look for versus jumping to conclusions and relying on bias.
Sometimes I think that some standards are placed too high on cops. Unfortunately, there is racism in nearly every profession, vocation, field, and industry, not just law enforcement. I’m not saying it’s right or excusing it, but it’s a pervasive issue that we are all dealing with.
I believe officers are supposed to make an independent judgment for each active use of force and it’s crucial to have a plan in place. They say ‘if the only tool you have is a hammer, then everything looks like a nail.’ What makes people cooperative is them seeing officers have a plan, someone in control, and following protocol. With the Garner tape, it looked like everyone was in a fight. No one was in control and they clearly did not have a plan in place before they approached him.
I certainly hope this conversation will continue and that the peaceful demonstrations will prevail.
(Bernard Parks is Los Angeles Councilman for the 8th Council District. He is also former Los Angeles Police Chief. He can be reached at [email protected])
-cw
CityWatch
Vol 12 Issue 101
Pub: Dec 16, 2014
