a lot of the west end could be detroyed as there are not earthquake proof and many have never been retrofitted
Older, vulnerable buildings in Vancouver could crumble in major quake
Alena Barner lives in a 1960s-era concrete apartment building in Vancouver.
Photograph by: Les Bazso, PNG
Alena Barner, a mother of two who rents in a mid-1960s, concrete apartment building at Hemlock and 12th in Vancouver, said she started to wonder about safety following the deadly quake in New Zealand. So about 10 days ago she went to city hall and asked to speak to several engineers.
“I was really disappointed. Either they didn’t know anything [about building safety] or they didn’t want me to know anything,” Barner said.
Now, she is even more worried about her building, after seeing the destruction in Japan following the 8.9 quake there last week and the certainty that it’s only a matter of time before one strikes here.
Barner said city staff told her they couldn’t share information about the building’s safety. She would have to access building plans from the owner.
She says she doubts the owner would give her the plans, and even if she obtained them, she would have to hire a private engineer to survey it.
Still, she found an expert and in an email exchange he told her that based on her description of the building and the year it was built, it would probably crumble in an earthquake.
It’s a reality many Vancouver residents could face if and when the big one finally hits, especially those living in older, privately-owned buildings that haven’t been seismically upgraded.
Mayor Gregor Robertson hinted as much following the Japan’s devastating quake, conceding to CTV News that not enough has been done to reinforce the city’s privately-owned buildings.
In contrast, the city and province have invested millions over the years to upgrade public buildings, bridges and schools.
A spokesperson for the city told The Province Friday that since 2001, all new on-or two-family dwellings in Vancouver have to incorporate seismic resistance.
In addition, for more than 10 years now, renovation permits for such buildings, as well as apartments, have required seismic upgrades.
Both these requirements are unique to Vancouver among B.C. jurisdiction, said the spokesperson.
Still, they do nothing to ensure older buildings are safe. And Robertson admitted there is still a lot more that needs to be done.
“There’s more vulnerability than I certainly would like,” Robertson told CBC News. “There are still vulnerable buildings.”
Perry Adebar, a professor of structural engineering at the University of B.C., said the biggest issue is that there is no mechanism in place to inspect these older buildings.
The only time they are inspected, he explained, is when they are being converted, say from an office tower to condos.
“There are lots of buildings out there that we built decades ago when we knew a lot less than we know now,” he said. “We need to have some process where we start to look at them and just identify the ones that we know are very bad and do something about those.”
Ideally, Adebar said the inspection process should be a joint effort between municipalities and the province. Until that process is in place, however, he suggested those who are concerned with the safety of their building to hire a structural engineer to have it assessed, a stance shared by the city.
But there are long-term and less onerous solutions in the works, explained Adebar.
One of the main projects of the recently-formed Canadian Seismic Research Network is to develop guidelines on how to evaluate and retrofit existing buildings in B.C.
Adebar said UBC has committed a significant amount of resources to the project that has already attracted the attention of experienced engineers who have agreed to volunteer their time.
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