In the early morning hours of Jan. 17, 1994, a 6.7 magnitude earthquake struck the Los Angeles area.
It became known as the Northridge earthquake. The earthquake killed at least 57 people and caused $20 billion in damage costs and more than $40 billion in economic losses, making it the costliest earthquake in U.S. history, according to the California Department of Conservation.
So 30 years later, what have we learned and what have we improved on?
Dr. Lucy Jones, a world-renowned seismologist, told L.A.’s Morning News’ Vicky Moore and Mike Simpson that even after 30 years, we still have a ways to go when it comes to earthquake preparedness.
“It’s, to me, the biggest step that we could still take. Our building codes are life safety,” she said. “Make sure you can crawl out alive. No guarantee. No consideration of what your financial losses are. So, think of all those people who've bought condos in downtown L.A. Those buildings are all badly damaged. They can't reoccupy their life savings. How do they stay in L.A.? I really worry about people abandoning the city after the earthquake.”
What buildings typically do well in big earthquakes? According to Dr. Jones, it’s single-family homes.
“Our codes for single-family homes tend to be really quite good,” she said. “If you don't have the newest home, retrofit it, go get somebody to look at it and you can probably make it stronger.”
Craig Chamberlain, president of the Structural Engineers Association of Southern California, told KNX News’ Margaret Carrero that he too believes more could be done to improve safety.
“One of the significant programs that really came out of Northridge through our Structural Engineers Association was our Safer Cities Initiative Program,” he said. “And that is a program where we have members of our organization work hand-in-hand with city officials, building officials, not only at L.A. DBS but around the city to help craft sensible legislation to retrofit our building stock.”
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Another thing that came out of the Northridge earthquake – the California Earthquake Authority.
“CEA was created in the wake of the Northridge tragedy to help insurance companies be able to offer earthquake insurance to California residents,” the organization’s website reads.
Janiele Maffei, the chief mitigation officer with the authority, said insurance companies weren’t prepared for the residential damage brought on by the earthquake.
“They were going to leave the state because they're required to offer earthquake insurance with their homeowners insurance, and so the cost went up because we really didn't understand just exactly how much the risk was before the Northridge earthquake,” she said. “Now we do and we have to deal with this very expensive risk that we have for all Californians.”
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