Why aren’t we preparing for the forthcoming earthquake?
The B.C. auditor general recently reported that the province is woefully unprepared, the government has been ignoring warnings for years and Emergency Management B.C. isn’t ready to respond to a catastrophic quake.
But the auditor general is missing one vital ingredient: EMBC cannot possibly rescue everybody and restore all collapsed houses after a seismic mega-event. The only way to ease that hellish scenario is to help homeowners prepare themselves and their homes for an earthquake. If their houses do not collapse (because they have had a seismic upgrade) and they therefore survive relatively unscathed, EMBC’s rescue work will be vastly easier.
Otherwise, the costs of recovering from a major quake will be astronomical.
People who have seen the results of an earthquake are certainly convinced. Audrey Prendergast of Fairfield visited Christchurch, New Zealand, after the devastating shake that city suffered in 2011.
“If you want to know what it will be like in Victoria after a big earthquake,” she told me, “just try to imagine Victoria with no heritage houses. It’s that simple: They’ll all be gone.”
To minimize a disaster like Christchurch’s (billions of dollars, 180 dead, perhaps 50 years to rebuild and recover), B.C. needs a paradigm shift: All the stakeholders — provincial and municipal governments, building code mavens, insurance companies and retrofit contractors — need to collaborate to hammer out a common policy so seismic upgrades can happen quickly and painlessly.
But it isn’t happening. Seismic upgrading appears to be mired in inter-governmental feuding and inertia.
About two years ago, the City of Victoria urged owners of older homes to get them seismically upgraded, so it recognizes how vital this is. But the city appears to be getting no support from the provincial government, which could ease frustrating regulations and provide needed funding.
The result? Only a handful of homes have been given the full treatment.
That leaves hundreds — probably thousands — of other homes that are vulnerable to earthquakes.
Upgrading against an earthquake costs money and is messy. But if your house is hit by a significant shake, it will be much more expensive, and considerably more messy.
And insurance likely won’t cover it.
Our family got the full works done on our basement last winter: As the owner of a heritage house, and a loudmouth in the heritage community, I thought we should walk the walk, even knowing we would be guinea pigs. It was not pretty (more than $20,000). We were naïve and we started with a fully finished basement.
A seismic upgrade is designed to strengthen the lower wood-frame walls and to tie them to the foundation. (Many old houses just sit loosely on the foundation wall.)
There are four basic stages:
1. Deep holes are drilled into the concrete foundation through the bottom of the framing, and long bolts are glued in. That keeps framing and foundation together.
2. Steel brackets are fixed to basement wall studs, to attach them to the horizontal plates on top of the concrete foundation and at the top of the basement wall.
3. Metal plates are nailed around the top of the basement wall, to attach it to the upper floor.
4. Heavy plywood panels are nailed onto the framing, providing enormous diagonal strength.
All this helps the house to resist motion in any direction. For an unfinished basement (with walls open on the inside), the work should take only a few days and the cost can be just a few thousand dollars. And don’t believe anyone who quotes less.
If you are a masochist, you could do it yourself. Many municipalities don’t require a building permit for a simple open-wall retrofit. The materials and tools are available locally, and you shouldn’t need to hire an engineer.
If, however, your basement is finished, the work will be considerably more expensive and more intrusive. You will need a savvy contractor who can stick-handle you through the surprises ahead, such as disposing of old drywall, replacing weak joists (the boards supporting the upper floor), dealing with antique plumbing and wiring that no longer meets code, and installing heavier insulation, maybe requiring deeper wall cavities.
And if a city building inspector is called in, that person can’t turn a blind eye to anything that doesn’t meet 2014 building code.
The city has to work within the existing rules. So how is B.C. helping? Energy reduction gets grants, why not disaster reduction?
And what is the insurance industry doing? Surely it would be in insurers’ interest to encourage seismic retrofits. They should be offering hefty discounts and reduced deductibles for retrofits.
Why aren’t provincial and municipal governments collaborating to actively promote residential earthquake upgrades? (And I don’t just mean an advertising campaign.) Why re-invent the wheel by setting up committees to develop seismic-retrofit building codes when they could borrow wholesale from those with more experience, such as California?
There’s no more time for committees: Somebody has to take the initiative. If this doesn’t happen, Victorians may live to regret it.
Or not.
Heritage researcher and writer Nick Russell is the author of Glorious Victorians: 150 Years/150 Houses: Celebrating Residential Architecture in B.C.’s Capital.
