By Rachel Dovey.
L.A. Mayor Eric Garretti last week called on the city to consider mandatory retrofits of steel-framed buildings — the first time he’s raised the possibility of such a project. Experts believe a number of Los Angeles’ steel-framed buildings erected before the 1994 Northridge earthquake, which killed 60 people and damaged upwards of 40,000 buildings, could collapse when the Big One hits, according to the Los Angeles Times.
“There are buildings in Los Angeles that have slipped through the cracks. But we can’t let people in an earthquake be killed by those cracks,” Garcetti told the paper. “Sometimes it takes political courage, but we have to make sure we don’t look back after an earthquake and have lives that were lost and say, ‘Well, we did as much as we could.’ ”
The steel-framed building retrofit is one of several proposals outlined in the new “Resilient Los Angeles” report. The document, like similar ones released in Atlanta, Pittsburgh and Boston, was crafted in partnership with the Rockefeller Foundation’s 100 Resilient Cities.
According to the Times, other key recommendations include:
- Developing customized disaster readiness plans for each of Los Angeles’ neighborhood councils — Venice would likely focus on sea-level rise, while the Hollywood Hills would probably make mudslides the priority.
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