Los Angeles City Council to Vote on Seismic Retrofit Mandates October 9, 2015

Los Angeles commercial real estate owners of non-ductile buildings may receive a notice in 2016 to comply with seismic retrofit mandates imposed by the Department of Building and Safety if the city council passes the ordinance on October 9, 2015. Non-ductile buildings are hard to determine according to Catherine Nuezca Gaba, a Building Civil Engineer at the city’s Department of Building and Safety. According to the city ordinance to be voted on tomorrow a non-ductile building is a building constructed prior to 1976 building codes that has concrete floors and/or roofs supported by concrete walls with unreinforced masonry walls that perform poorly and collapse in the event of an earthquake. University California Students created a list of about 1,500 non-ductile buildings in the city of Los Angeles, Nuezca Gaba said. However, the letter to comply to be sent to owners once the ordinance passes will have a checklist for them to complete. How they answer the letter will determine if their building is non-ductile concrete. The ordinance requires the owner of a non-ductile concrete building to evaluate the required work within five years, and afterward complete all necessary retrofit work on the building within 25 years.