California Building Standards Commission to reassess hospital earthquake safety

SACRAMENTO, CALIF.—The California Building Standards Commission recently approved plans to use HAZUS software to reclassify the earthquake risks in hospitals, a move that will reduce the near-term earthquake retrofit spending at California hospitals by billions of dollars.

The commission’s action amends the rules for implementing SB 1953, California’s legislation governing earthquake readiness for hospitals, by permitting the use of HAZUS, a new methodology developed by the Federal Emergency Management Agency for estimating losses due to earthquakes, and creatively adapted by the Office of Statewide Health Planning and Development.

The commission acted after receiving public testimony that included comments by Degenkolb Engineers President and CEO Chris Poland, a past president of the Earthquake Engineering Research Institute, and a leading expert on structural and earthquake engineering. "The original methods were based on the state-of-the-art in 1994, and we now know that they triggered the need to upgrade too many buildings by 2008, which would have immediately raised healthcare costs by billions unnecessarily," he said. California’s hospitals are expected to meet modern, fully operational standards in 2030. The 2008 deadline was intended to affect hospitals in threat of collapse from an earthquake.

The new method uses HAZUS software that assesses how individual buildings would perform in earthquakes expected to affect the specific location where the building is located. The program utilizes the latest ground-shaking estimates from the California Geologic Survey and calculates the expected performance. Proponents of the new method say that HAZUS is a more accurate assessment of a building’s response to the expected seismic activity.

The original method, as applied by hospitals, required seismic repair or replacement of nearly 1,000 of California’s hospital buildings. "This new method is not only more accurate in assessing a hospital’s risk of failure in a 500-year earthquake, but it also saves the state billions of dollars in repairs that do not need to be completed until 2030. Many of the buildings that are safe from collapse have been inaccurately labeled as unsafe by previous rudimentary measurements," said Poland. "The HAZUS software is an unbiased, scientifically defendable computer program. If it had been available, I’m sure we would have used it back in the ’90s to do the original assessment."

SB 1953, the Hospital Facilities Seismic Safety Act, was signed into law in 1994 with a 35-year timeline to ensure all California hospitals meet immediate occupancy standards for a 500-year earthquake by 2030. The law includes four major milestones related to achieving this goal. The 2008 deadline was aimed at finding and eliminating those buildings that posed a significant risk of collapse. It builds upon previous earthquake hazard legislation, such as the Alquist-Priolo Earthquake Fault Zoning Act of 1972, which prevented the construction of buildings used for human occupancy on active faults. Former state Sen. Al Alquist at the time estimated that 8 percent to 10 percent of California’s hospitals were unsafe and needed to be eliminated by 2008, a number that is reflected in the most recent HAZUS mapping.