LOS ANGELES (AP) – Mayor Eric Garcetti on Monday proposed spending billions of dollars to better protect Los Angeles against a devastating earthquake by strengthening thousands of vulnerable older buildings and fortifying the city’s water and communications systems.
The sweeping plan left unclear what the final cost would be and, in some cases, who would get the bill. A 126-page report released by the mayor recommends a host of seismic safeguards, including building a solar-powered Wi-Fi network that could keep people in touch in an emergency and developing alternative water sources for firefighters, including seawater and swimming pools.
“We cannot afford to be complacent,” the mayor said at City Hall, referring to the risk that another major earthquake could hit fault-laced Southern California. A 1994 quake in the city’s Northridge neighbourhood killed at least 57 people and caused $25 billion in damage.
“All of us are at risk,” he said.
Scientists have long pondered the potential for the so-called “Big One”, a powerful earthquake on the San Andreas Fault that leaves Los Angeles and its suburbs shaking like a bowl of jelly.
A strong quake on the big fault that knifes across California could leave the region in chaos, with cracked freeways, broken water and sewer pipes, hundreds of raging fires, homes without power, and scores dead, by some estimates.
The heart of Garcetti’s plan, to be submitted to the City Council, would require strengthening dangerous older structures – those constructed before 1980.
It would apply to so-called “soft-first-story” buildings, which are typically wood-framed and have a garage on the ground floor, and more than 1 400 concrete buildings, including some schools, apartments and warehouses, that are considered at risk of collapse in future earthquakes.
Thousands of people would be in such vulnerable concrete buildings on a typical weekday.
