June 23, 2010

A California appellate court upheld a San Luis Obispo County jury decision to award the families of two women who were killed when a Paso Robles building collapsed on them almost $2 million in damages. [Judgment]

The 111-year-old Acorn Building in Paso Robles was not reinforced to handle an earthquake.

Both Jennifer Lynn Myrick and Marilyn Frost-Zafuto worked in a clothing store in the building. In December 2003, during the San Simeon earthquake, a portion of the building collapsed, crushing them.

On appeal, the defendant, building owner Mary Mastagni, argued she had no duty to retrofit the building until 2018, the deadline established by a city ordinance.

The Ventura-based Second District California Court of Appeals upheld the lower court’s decision.

“Certainly, the city considered the interests of building owners in setting the deadline for compliance,” said Justice Arthur Gilbert in the appellate court’s decision. “But the overriding policy behind the seismic retrofit ordinance, taken as a whole, is not the promotion of the interests of building owners. Instead, the overriding policy is public safety.”

Source: CalCoastNews.com

This week, the Bay Area team is working in a lab at a major life science company not too far from the San Andreas Fault.

There are hundreds of such companies all over the area, many of which suffered significant damage in the Loma Prieta earthquake in 1989.  We're using the Safe-T-Proof Fastening System, putting safety straps on analyzers, centrifuges, HPLC's and all sorts of lab equipment.  There was one piece in one of the labs I hadn't seen before, so out of curiosity I looked up it's value on the internet.  A new one of these machines costs $175,000.  That got me to thinking.

Certainly not all items we are securing cost this much, and some probably cost a bit more, but overall we are securing around 300 items for under $10,000.  When you stop to consider the cost of securing items versus the cost of the items themselves, and then look at the addtiional cost to companies of lost research and down time after an earthquake, it's amazing to me that securing items isn't a standard operating procedure, and part of planning and setting up of new spaces, in ALL lab environments.

Yet in this lab the motivation for doing the work was not the enormous potential return on investment.  When I asked the department head why she was getting the work done when so few others do, she replied:  "I care about my crew.  I don't want anything to happen to them in an earthquake, and I have to be able to sleep at night."

Now THAT's a good return on investment!

During a recent facility walk through to determine seismic risk, I had the opportunity to interact with a Fortune 50 facilities representative as he prioritized the need for securing item contents. 

There is a wide variety of approaches companies take in determining risk.  Some hire experts such as Peter Yanev to do an analysis and help guide the organization into an overall business continuity plan based on actual earthquake damage around the world.  In other words, fix what actually will fail.  Some entities have committees with varied backgrounds, who gather up as much information as possible in an attempt to come up with informed decisions.  In these cases, each member may have his or her own bias, and area of assumed risk.   I imagine conversations such as:  “We need to fasten everything worth more than $10,000 with safety straps.”  Or, “We need to fasten everything that is radioactive.”  Or perhaps, “We need to fasten everything in my department”.  Maybe there is one person who maintains, “We need to fasten everything!”

Still, in more cases than not, the decision on what to fasten is left to one person who simply gives it his or her best shot.  On this particular walkthrough, the facilities representative shared three pieces of information that influenced his prioritization process:

1. That item is too big to move in an earthquake.  It IT moves, we’re all dead.
2. That item MIGHT move in an earthquake, but adhesive fasteners aren’t going to hold it – any better than double-stick tape would.
3. We don’t need to fasten that (In this case computer monitors) because they don’t really cost much.

If there are three points every organization should understand, it is these:

1. EVERYTHING moves in an earthquake.  You need to determine if an item moving creates a problem.
2. Adhesive based fasteners can work INCREDIBLY WELL in earthquakes.  The larger the adhesive, the better it works.  The better the adhesive, the better it works.
3. THERE  IS AN ECONOMY OF SCALE associated with earthquake damage.  A company losing 3 monitors may not have an issue.  A company losing 3000 most likely will.  Additionally, if one company loses monitors in an earthquake, it is likely others will as well—and there is likely to be a monitor supply shortage after the earthquake.

 The committee member who says, “We need to fasten everything!” just may have it right.

There is a lot of unusual earthquake activity going on these days.

The recent Christchurch earthquake in New Zealand was a magnitude 6.3 but shook the ground with more G-Force than any earthquake ever measured.

Aside from the devastating tsunami it spurned, the huge Japan earthquake’s shaking caused liquefaction to occur in dynamic ways that had never been recorded.

And now, on the border of California and Nevada, dozens of earthquakes, many over magnitude 4, are occurring every few days in an area where there supposedly aren’t any faults.  Why is this of concern?  Many destructive earthquakes occur on previously unknown faults.

Our mapping of exact fault locations is far from complete.  To quote world-renown earthquake engineering expert Peter Yanev, “In most of California, you might as well assume you are right on top of a fault whether or not it is listed on a map!”

Check out the image below.  293 earthquake centered mostly around one area near Hawthorne, Nevada.

And while the cluster of earthquakes shown on the USGS map above don’t appear to be too close to major metropolitan areas, recent history tells us that 200 miles isn’t too far for an earthquake wave to travel to cause significant damage.  The location of these quakes is about 130 miles south of Reno, and about the same distance away from Stockton and Fresno.

It may be nothing.  Then again…

The scale of Japan's March 11 earthquake and tsunami wasn't the only thing that surprised geologists.

The 9.0 earthquake in Japan — the fourth most powerful quake ever recorded — also caused an unusually severe and widespread shift in soil through liquefaction, a new study suggests.

Near coastlines, harbors and rivers, earthquakes can make the wet, sandy soil jiggle, turning it temporarily from a solid to a liquid state, a process known as liquefaction. Heavy sand and rock sinks, while water and lighter sand bubble to the surface. The slurry spreads, often toward the water, and the surface shifts.

Japan's liquefaction occurred over hundreds of miles, surprising even experienced engineers who are accustomed to seeing disaster sites, including from the recent earthquakes in Chile and New Zealand.

Other areas vulnerable

The study raises questions about whether existing building codes in other vulnerable locations can enable structures to withstand massive liquefaction, including in areas of Oregon, Washington and California.

"We've seen localized examples of soil liquefaction as extreme as this before, but the distance and extent of damage in Japan were unusually severe," said Scott Ashford, a study team member from Oregon State University.

"Entire structures were tilted and sinking into the sediments, even while they remained intact," said Ashford, who is based in Corvallis, Ore. "The shifts in soil destroyed water, sewer and gas pipelines, crippling the utilities and infrastructure these communities need to function. We saw some places that sank as much as 4 feet," or 1.2 meters.

Long-lasting quake

The duration of the Japanese earthquake, about five minutes, could be the key to the severity of the liquefaction and may force researchers to reconsider the extent of liquefaction damage possible.

"With such a long-lasting earthquake, we saw how structures that might have been okay after 30 seconds just continued to sink and tilt as the shaking continued for several more minutes," Ashford said. "And it was clear that younger sediments, and especially areas built on recently filled ground, are much more vulnerable."

An event almost exactly like Japan's is expected in the Pacific Northwest from the Cascadia Subduction Zone, and the new findings make it clear that liquefaction will be a critical issue in the young soils there.

"Young" sediments, in geologic terms, are those deposited within the past 10,000 years or so. In Oregon, for instance, that describes much of downtown Portland, the Portland International Airport, nearby industrial facilities and other cities and parts of the Willamette Valley.

About 1,100 bridges in Oregon are at risk from an earthquake on the Cascadia Subduction Zone, according to the Oregon Department of Transportation. Fewer than 15 percent of them have been retrofitted to prevent collapse.

Some damage may be reduced or prevented by different construction techniques or retrofitting, Ashford said. But another reasonable goal is to at least anticipate the damage — to know what will probably be destroyed, make contingency plans for what will be needed to implement repairs, and design ways to help protect and care for residents until services can be restored, the researchers say.

Article from www.LiveScience.com

I’ve been in the earthquake preparedness business long enough to see an enormous variety of methods used to secure furniture, as well as myths regarding the nature of earthquakes, and multiple ways people have advised on how to survive an earthquake.

Here are a few highlights to help you prepare before an earthquake, and thrive after an earthquake:

• Utilize the USGS website (usgs.gov) for accurate earthquake information
• Don’t get in a doorway in a quake, get under a table and hold on
• If you are in bed in an earthquake, stay there and put a pillow on your head.  The so-called “Triangle of Life” is nonsense.
• Do not secure furniture with pot-metal l-brackets.  Stay away from Velcro fasteners which don’t have an adequate 90% pull resistance, and those open/close flap fasteners that fold close, as they also have a 90 degree deficiency.  I recommend the Safe-T-Proof fastening system, which features a locking system that works well regardless of the direction of the pull. The SAFE-T-PROOF safety fasteners and furniture fasteners can be seen demonstrated in the Mobile Earthquake Simulator on this Earthquake Simulator video
• Unless you want to change out the product a couple of times a year, stay away from wax to secure your valuables like statues and collectibles.  Instead use putty.  Putty’s don’t dry out and don’t need to be replaced.  I prefer the “Quake Secure” product.
• Take the number of people in your family and add them up.  Take the total number of pets in your family and divide by two.  Add the totals together and multiply by 10.  That is how many gallons of water you need to have on hand.  My family has me, my wife, my step-daughter, and my mother-in-law.  That is four people.  We have 3 cats and a dog.  Four pets divided by two is two.  Four plus two is six.  Six time ten is sixty.  That is how much emergency drinking water we have.  It is in sealed water barrels, and has a preservative and a 5 year shelf life.
• Keep construction grade (3 mil) trash bags and cat litter on hand to turn your non-functioning toilet (after an earthquake) into a functioning toilet.
• Buy the book “Peace of Mind in Earthquake Country” by Peter Yanev and read it cover to cover.
• Hide at least $200 in cash somewhere safe so you can get it after an earthquake.

 Complete each of these as described and sit back and relax.  You are now more prepared for an earthquake than 95% of Americans!

When looking at the issues facing businesses post-earthquake, and the limited resources to do much about it pre-earthquake, many business owners are stuck in determining how and where to spend their mitigation dollar.

Do I buy more than enough insurance?  Do I focus on life safety?  Business Continuity?  Asset Protection?  Do I focus on reducing down time, or concentrate on doing all I can to keep from getting sued?  Is my building the problem, or the stuff inside the building?  Hellllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllp!

Here are a couple of factors that may help make the decision for you when prioritizing where to begin.

1. It’s great to have excellent car insurance, but even better to never need to use it.  If I could take specific actions to avoid damage to my car and my body it is to my benefit.  The same is true with earthquake damage prevention.
2. FEMA estimates that 75% of future earthquake losses and insurance claims will be to the non-structural components of buildings.  Check out this article:  http://www.jacobsschool.ucsd.edu/news/news_releases/release.sfe?id=690. 

So since I can do something pre-earthquake that can improve my business continuity post-earthquake, and 75% of my vulnerability is to non-structural elements, the low-      hanging mitigation fruit is my non-structural components.

The University of Oregon has done some cutting edge work on developing a prioritization methodology.  They map out on their huge campus things like the value of contents, the number of people that work there, and the revenue generated in research.  Overlapping the results of each measurement creates a specific relative vulnerability to each area.  City of Hope National Medical Center simply made it a priority  to brace everything that can cause life safety or business operation issues in an earthquake, fastened it all in one huge project, and then has deftly maintained the bracing program, for over a decade!

On the other hand, one Fortune 50 company facilities manager shared with me that they don’t want to even do a building by building assessment out of fear that if the assessment was done, then that information could be held against the company if the quake hit and people got hurt, if the mitigation efforts had not been implemented.  I shared with him the fact that many groups were sued follow the 911 attacks because they failed to prepare for a known threat, so assessing the specifics of disaster prevention doesn’t logically add to the risk of litigation.  As far as I know, not only is the mitigation not done at this company, neither has the assessment of risk.

More and more, companies are looking at implementing engineered systems that reduce earthquake damage before spaces are occupied.  Stanford University is doing that at their new stem cell building.  Once done, the building contents can switch out over the next few decades (as they invariably will), but the system is in place to secure new items without having to start from scratch.  It’s the best kind of insurance.  Most of it is paid for right from the start, and the coverage lasts for years.

Recent speculation has California in the direct crosshairs of the next major earthquake.

The rationale seems to be a four corners theory—and three of the corners have just had their disaster.

If you look at a map of the Pacific Plate, which basically runs the perimeter of the Pacific Ocean, it’s easy to see why folks think California has just stepped into the earthquake batter’s box.  Last year there was an 8.8 Mega-Thrust quake in Chile, which from space would be in the lower right of the plate.  Then came the New Zealand’s small, but super strong earthquake, occupying the lower left quadrant.  The Japan 9.0 quake occurred in top left portion of the plate.  What is left?  The top right.  California, Oregon and Washington.

While most of California has no Subduction zone, it has plenty of Blind Thrust faults ala New Zealand.  We’ve learned it doesn’t take a 9.0 magnitude quake to bring down buildings and shut down a city.  Northern California, Oregon and Washington do have the Cascadia Subduction Zone, primed to slip and complete the major earthquake total rotation of the Pacific plate.

Still, all of this is conjecture.  For my part, it doesn’t really matter when the next big quake hits the West Coast of the United States.  The reality is we now know that earthquakes can strike with a devastation far beyond what is expected.  It only makes sense to plan for the worst…and hope for the best.