seismic retrofits in LA

[a2mfk]

I am surprised there was no mention of the banking or insurance industries getting involved in this, as they are also major stakeholders. It could be looked at as an overall investment, as the money and lives saved if there is a major EQ would be huge in comparison to the cost of the upgrades. Insurance companies could offer rebates and/or discounts on future insurance premiums, which they do in Florida if you make hurricane/wind improvements to your house (rather small amount but they offer it). Also, if FEMA were to have to step in and pick up a lot of the financial tab in a disaster, some type of grant where they help out would likely save us (society, taxpayers) a lot of money in prevention versus reaction.

 

[releky]

How do they intend to seismic retrofit any building especially the beams (no problem with columns as carbon fiber or increasing the dimension may work) but in beam it is problematic?

Note that in seismic design, the stirrups alone have to resist the entire 1.2 Dead load + 1.6 Live Load and beam rotations equal to Mpr(-) + Mpr (+) / length or about 80% of the gravity load. How do you insert stirrups into existing beams? Carbon fiber can't do because of strain incompability and behavior difficult to predict, metal plates being very rigid can crack the beam.

So what could they possibly have in mind?

 

[wannabeSE]

In Los Angeles, there are two issues that have been in the news with the recent anniversary of the Northridge earthquake. The article seems to muddle them together.

One is soft-story buildings (I think mostly wood residential). This may be in the news because San Francisco recently started a seven year program to retrofit soft/weak story buildings.

The second is older concrete buildings. The University of California recently released a list of about 1500 concrete buildings in Los Angeles that could be a potential problem in an earthquake because they were built before 1976.