First the Earth Quakes, then the Law Suits - SPA Risk ...

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First the Earth Quakes, then the Law Suits - SPA Risk ...
First the Earth
  Quakes, then                                                                                                                    The retrofits will be very costly, but not
                                                                                                                               retrofitting them will be far more expen-
                                                                                                                               sive, both in lives lost and money wasted.

  the Law Suits
                                                                                                                               Only a few must collapse to render the rest
                                                                                                                               suddenly worthless, just as it took only
                                                                                                                               two crashes of Boeing 737 MAX aircraft to
                                                                                                                               ground the rest. Owners, lessors, employ-
                                                                                                                               ers, property management agencies, and
                                                                                                                               even government officials, many of whom
                                                                                                                               are aware of the problem, could face serious
   By Keith Porter and Edward Thomas                                                                                           civil or criminal legal liability if they fail to
                                                                                                                               act on the threat.

                                                                                                                               A Serious Earthquake Problem with

O
         lder steel-frame buildings built between about 1960 and 1994 pose a very                                              Older Steel-Frame Buildings in the
         high collapse risk in earthquakes, owing to unexpectedly brittle welds.                                               United States
         There are probably thousands of these buildings in seismically active                                                 Several typical classes of buildings suffer
states, including some of California’s biggest buildings. The structural engineering                                           from well-known seismic vulnerabilities
community has known about the risk for 25 years and has widely publicized it.                                                  that make them far less safe than other
Detailed studies have explained the risk and offered practical retrofit measures.                                              buildings, dangerous enough to make sev-
Unless remediated, most of these buildings will be at serious risk when (not if) a                                             eral California communities require costly
big earthquake occurs and potentially causes some of them to collapse.                                                         building evaluation and remediation for
                                                                                                                               the sake of public safety and welfare. E.g.,
Keith Porter, PE, PhD, is a licensed professional engineer, a research professor at                                            San Francisco, Cal., Ordinance 66-13, Build-
                                                                                                                                                                                               istockphoto

the University of Colorado in Boulder, Colorado, and a principal of SPA Risk LLC in                                            ing Code (2013), https://bit.ly/2MuKYCi;
Denver, Colorado. Edward Thomas is an attorney and president emeritus of the                                                   Oakland, Cal., Ordinance No. 12966 C.M.S.
Natural Hazard Mitigation Association in Boston, Massachusetts.
                                                                                                                               (2009), https://bit.ly/31cjtlb; Los Angeles,
Published in Probate & Property, Volume 33, No 6 © 2019 by the American Bar Association. Reproduced with permission. All rights reserved. This information or any portion thereof may not be
copied or disseminated in any form or by any means or stored in an electronic database or retrieval system without the express written consent of the American Bar Association.

                                        34                                                                                                                         November/December 2019
First the Earth Quakes, then the Law Suits - SPA Risk ...
Cal., Mayoral Seismic Task Force, Resilience
by Design – Building a Stronger Los Ange-
les (2015), https://bit.ly/2kdRTE7; Santa
Monica, Cal., Ordinance No. 2537 (2017),
https://bit.ly/33cH72O. These ordinances
address, among others, certain classes of
older reinforced concrete buildings, larger
wood-frame apartment buildings, and—
the subject of this article—some older
steel-frame buildings that pose a serious,
potentially catastrophic, seismic risk.
    A recent New York Times article called
attention to the “big seismic gamble” of
constructing high rise buildings in earth-
quake country, eliciting responses from
structural engineers ranging from seri-
ous concern to dismissal. T. Fuller, A.
Singhvi, and J. Williams, San Francisco’s
Big Seismic Gamble, N.Y. Times, Apr. 17,                         Figure 1. Collapsed steel-frame Pino-Suarez Towers after the July 28, 1985 Mexico City earthquake.
2018, p. 1., https://nyti.ms/2J0VtYX. The                        A 14-story building collapsed on top of an adjacent one. Photo by E.V. Leyendecker, UC Berkeley
article quotes one highly regarded struc-                        NISEE e-Library, with permission.
tural engineer as saying that “[b]uildings
falling on top of other buildings—that’s                         one of insufficient money and short-term                         International and others. See ASTM
not going to happen.” That sounds very                           financial planning, and the limited (and                         Int’l, E2026 – 07 Standard Guide for Seis-
comforting, but “that” has in fact hap-                          somewhat conflicted) role of engineers in                        mic Risk Assessment of Buildings (2007),
pened many times, Figure 1 being one                             addressing the seismic safety of existing                        https://bit.ly/2meOsOh; Fed. Emergency
of many examples. The structural engi-                           buildings.                                                       Mgmt. Agency, FEMA P-154: Rapid Visual
neering community has known for                                                                                                   Screening of Buildings for Potential Seismic
decades of strong evidence that a serious                        How to Identify a Pre-Northridge                                 Hazards: A Handbook, Third Edition (2015),
problem exists, that a particular class of                       Welded-Steel Moment Frame                                        https://bit.ly/2OvFyJN; Am. Soc’y of Civil
high-rise buildings could realistically col-                     Any licensed professional engineer spe-                          Eng’rs, Seismic Evaluation and Retrofit of
lapse in large, but not-exceedingly-rare,                        cializing in structures should have the                          Existing Buildings: ASCE/SEI 41-13 (2013),
earthquakes.                                                     skill set to identify whether a particular                       https://bit.ly/2JwCDg7.
    Several studies by reputable research-                       building falls into the class of build-
ers and practitioners conclude that steel                        ings addressed here. The necessary data                          The Welds at the Root of the
buildings built between about 1960 and                           are commonly available from design                               Problem
1994 could collapse in a sizable earth-                          documents, especially structural draw-                           The problem arises from the unexpected
quake, with potentially several collapses in                     ings. Some building owners keep such                             fragility of welds that connect beams to
a single earthquake. A single high-rise col-                     drawings in their own files. Structural                          columns in steel buildings commonly
lapse could kill 1,000 or more occupants.                        engineers ordinarily maintain architec-                          erected between the 1960s and the
Structural engineers and the US Federal                          tural drawings of the buildings they have                        mid-1990s. The 1994 Northridge earth-
Emergency Management Agency (FEMA)                               designed. City building departments                              quake revealed that these welds are far
have known about this issue at least since                       maintain files of structural drawings that                       more likely to break than engineers had
the magnitude-6.7 1994 Northridge earth-                         engineers can examine to determine the                           previously thought, fracturing at levels
quake. Because the problem garnered                              age and structural system of a building.                         of earthquake shaking as low as one-
national attention after the 1994 earth-                            Real estate investors who buy large                           twelfth the values that their designers had
quake, the problem buildings are usually                         buildings in earthquake country reg-                             assumed (Figure 2, page 36). Laboratory
referred to as pre-Northridge welded-steel                       ularly engage structural engineers to                            tests at least as early as 1988 hinted at the
moment frames.                                                   perform seismic risk assessments, some-                          problem when welds in a test specimen
    Engineers have studied and written                           times called probable maximum loss                               suffered a brittle fracture like the ones
extensively about these buildings, both                          (PML) studies, as part of their due-dili-                        observed in real buildings just a few years
within professional publications and                             gence evaluation of the risk of buildings                        later. K.C. Tsai, and E.P. Popov, Steel Beam-
through interviews in the general press,                         they are considering buying. Standard-                           Column Joints in Seismic Moment-Resisting
but owners and responsible governments                           ized procedures exist to guide such                              Frames, UC Berkeley Earthquake Engineer
have done little to solve it. This is not a                      studies, documented in standards, guide-                         Research Center Report UCB/EERC-88/19
problem of inadequate information, but                           lines, and training materials by ASTM                            (1988).
Published in Probate & Property, Volume 33, No 6 © 2019 by the American Bar Association. Reproduced with permission. All rights reserved. This information or any portion thereof may not be
copied or disseminated in any form or by any means or stored in an electronic database or retrieval system without the express written consent of the American Bar Association.
 November/December 2019
                              35
First the Earth Quakes, then the Law Suits - SPA Risk ...
How Engineers Know That Brittle                                  design-level shaking. Buildings tend to be
                                                                 Welds Make Collapse More Likely                                  slightly stronger than the code requires,
                                                                 Buildings are designed for much weaker                           so, in the case of a typical building, a
                                                                 shaking than they are expected to expe-                          pre-Northridge steel frame might suffer
                                                                 rience in a design-level earthquake. To                          life-threatening damage at perhaps one-
                                                                 ensure that a steel-frame building does                          tenth or one-eighth design-level shaking.
                                                                 not suffer life-threatening damage despite
                                                                 that weakness, engineers count on the                            Hundreds, Probably Thousands,
                                                                 steel beams’ ability to tolerate a great deal                    of Problem Buildings in
                                                                 of deformation through damage to their                           California Alone
                                                                 microscopic crystal structure without                            According to a real estate database pub-
                                                                 breaking. The same phenomenon can be                             lished by Emporis GMBH, California
                                                                 observed by bending a paper clip. If bent                        contains approximately 740 buildings
                                                                 just a little, the paper clip snaps back to its                  of at least ten stories in height and built
                                                                 original shape. When bent more, it does                          between 1960 and 1994. These buildings
                                                                 not snap all the way back, but also does                         contain more than 200 million square feet
                                                                 not break. At a microscopic level, the crys-                     and perhaps one million occupants. Most
Figure 2. The 1994 Northridge earthquake
                                                                 tal structure of the steel in the paper clip                     of them are pre-Northridge welded-steel
revealed fragility in the welds that connect
                                                                 has been damaged, but not enough to                              moment frames. Many shorter build-
beams to columns in a kind of steel frame
                                                                 cause the steel to break.                                        ings use the same structural system and
construction commonly used in tall buildings for
                                                                     Ductility is the ability to tolerate dam-                    probably add many times these figures,
the previous few decades. This figure shows
                                                                 age without breaking. Ductility is reflected                     meaning perhaps thousands of problem-
an actual fracture observed in a building
                                                                 in the International Building Code with a                        atic buildings with millions of occupants.
after the earthquake. Photo by J.C. Anderson,
                                                                 factor currently called R. Engineers divide                      The same problem applies to buildings of
1994, from the Earthquake Engineering Online
                                                                 design-level shaking by R to calculate the                       the same era built outside of California.
Archive NISEE e-Library, UC Berkeley, with
                                                                 required strength at which the steel frame
permission.
                                                                 begins to endure damage. That factor R                           Not a Problem of Uncertainty or
                                                                 for steel moment frames has varied over                          Incomplete Information
                                                                 time. At the time of the 1994 Northridge                         The problem is not one of uncertainty
Chemistry and Geometry Contrib-                                  earthquake, it had a value of 12, meaning                        or lack of information. FEMA sponsored
ute to the Weak Welds                                            that steel frame buildings were believed                         a multimillion-dollar study by a con-
The welds that connect the beams and                             to be so ductile that they could tolerate                        sortium of engineering researchers and
columns proved to be brittle for several                         12 times the shaking that it would cause                         practitioners called the SAC Joint Ven-
reasons. Part of the problem was chemi-                          the steel in the beams to begin to witness                       ture. By 1997, the SAC Joint Venture had
cal: the so-called flux-cored arc welding                        damage to their crystal structure, without                       published several documents on why
process produced welds with very low                             life-threatening damage. The welds were                          the welds broke and what to do about
toughness, meaning it took unexpect-                             believed to be stronger than beams, so the                       the problem. E.g., SAC Joint Venture,
edly little energy to break them. Several                        beams would act as a fuse, protecting the                        FEMA 267 Interim Guidelines: Evalua-
other problems also contributed to mak-                          welds from damage.                                               tion, Repair, Modification, and Design of
ing these welds brittle. Straddling a beam,                          That assumption proved wrong. In                             Welded Steel Moment Frame Structures,
welders had to reach down to either side                         several buildings studied after the 1994                         SAC Report 95-02 (1995). These reports
to connect the lower beam flange to the                          Northridge earthquake, 10 to 25 per-                             largely eliminated uncertainty about the
column, making it difficult to make a                            cent of welds fractured when they were                           nature of the weld problem. As three lead-
high-quality weld on the lower flange (the                       exposed to the level of shaking that would                       ing earthquake engineers put it in 1996,
bottom horizontal part of the I-beam).                           cause damage to the attached beams. In                           “[t]he Northridge earthquake of Janu-
This method tended to leave various                              a sense, the welds had a ductility of one,                       ary 17, 1994, has fundamentally shaken
defects in the welds. The defects could be                       although they were expected to be stron-                         engineers’ confidence in the seismic per-
hard for inspectors to see. Also, some of                        ger than the beams. The welds became                             formance and safety of WSMF buildings.”
the engineers’ assumptions about how                             the weak link. That weakness eliminated                          S.A. Mahin, J.O. Malley, and R.O. Ham-
forces were transmitted from the beam                            the advantage of ductile beams, invali-                          burger, Phase 2 of the SAC Steel Project,
to the column were wrong, and the welds                          dating the assumption that the building                          Proceedings: 65th Annual Convention,
carried forces that engineers had assumed                        as a whole had a ductility of 12. With a                         Structural Engineers Association of Cal-
were carried by the bolted connection                            ductility of one rather than 12, a build-                        ifornia, Oct. 1–6, 1996. US engineers
on the beam web (the vertical part of the                        ing that just met code at the time of the                        quickly stopped designing steel build-
beam). There are other causes, but these                         earthquake can be expected to suffer life-                       ings with the problematic weld, but the
are a few of the leading ones.                                   threatening damage at one-twelfth the                            change in construction practice after
Published in Probate & Property, Volume 33, No 6 © 2019 by the American Bar Association. Reproduced with permission. All rights reserved. This information or any portion thereof may not be
copied or disseminated in any form or by any means or stored in an electronic database or retrieval system without the express written consent of the American Bar Association.

                                        36                                                                                                                         November/December 2019
First the Earth Quakes, then the Law Suits - SPA Risk ...
1994 did not fix the welds in buildings                                                                               A Question of When, Not If
built before the 1994 earthquake.                                                                                     Substantial earthquakes are inevitable. In
    Of course, collapse involves more                                                                                 many places, they are arguably overdue.
than welds: the earthquake matters,                                                                                   Most of the earthquakes considered in the
as does the configuration of the build-                                                                               previous examples occur on average every
ing. But little doubt should remain that                                                                              150 to 300 years or so, and because there
realistic earthquakes can cause the col-                                                                              are so many of them, one of them is fairly
lapse of realistic buildings with the bad                                                                             likely to occur within decades and could
welds. Shortly after the 1994 Northridge                                                                              occur any day. The San Francisco Bay area
earthquake, a Caltech study found that a                                                                              is more likely than not to experience a
magnitude-7.0 Los Angeles earthquake                                                                                  magnitude seven or greater earthquake
could realistically cause the collapse of a                                                                           in the next 30 years (Figure 4, page 38).
20-story steel-frame building, even with-                                                                             California has a 93 percent chance of a
out accounting for the problem with the                                                                               magnitude seven or larger earthquake
                                                                    Figure 3. Map of the San Francisco Bay
welds. T.H. Heaton, J.F. Hall, D.J. Wald, &                                                                           in the next 30 years, and greater than
                                                                    region, California, showing severity of shaking
M.W. Halling, Response of High-Rise and                                                                               99 percent probability of an earthquake
                                                                    in the moment-magnitude-7.0 mainshock of
Base-Isolated Buildings to a Hypothetical Mw                                                                          at least the size of the 1994 Northridge
                                                                    the USGS’s HayWired earthquake scenario,
7.0 Blind Thrust Earthquake, Science, New                                                                             earthquake. E.H. Field, UCERF3: A New
                                                                    calculated for a 5-percent damped, 0.2-second
Series, 267 (5195), Jan. 13, 1995, 206-11,                                                                            Earthquake Forecast for California’s Com-
                                                                    spectral acceleration. Red color (a value of 1.0)
https://bit.ly/2lQUpAU.pdf. Several other                                                                             plex Fault System (No. 2015-3009) 4 (U.S.
                                                                    corresponds to 50 percent stronger shaking
studies by a variety of practitioners and                                                                             Geological Survey 2015). Any of these can
                                                                    than is used for design of new buildings.
scholars did account for the brittle welds,                                                                           produce design-level or stronger shaking.
                                                                    Orange or warmer colors (greater than 0.67
building configuration, and earthquake,                                                                               The higher the magnitude, the higher the
                                                                    in the legend) exceed design-level shaking. The
using various building designs and loca-                                                                              likelihood that any given building will sus-
                                                                    legend “demand to design ratio” refers to the
tions. Each found a significant chance                                                                                tain such shaking.
                                                                    ratio of the shaking in a given earthquake to a
of collapse in realistic, even inevitable,                                                                                Nor is California unique among the
                                                                    level of shaking that appears in a USGS map
earthquakes near Los Angeles, San Fran-                                                                               states in experiencing strong earth-
                                                                    used in seismic design.
cisco, and Seattle. E.g., B.F. Maison, and                                                                            quakes. It is easy to find maps showing
D. Bonowitz, How Safe are Pre-Northridge                                                                              shaking in large, realistic scenario earth-
WSMFs? A case study of the SAC Los Angeles                        damage to connections in real buildings.            quakes published by the USGS (the
9-story Building, Earthquake Spectra 15 (4),                      An analysis of the data shows that a large          nation’s authority on earthquake haz-
765-89. And not in small, isolated pockets                        fraction of those connections fractured             ards) and by the Building Seismic Safety
of these urban areas, either. As a recently                       at levels of shaking in the Northridge              Council (a group organized by the con-
published study by the University of                              earthquake that were much lower than                gressionally-chartered National Institute
Colorado Boulder for the US Geologi-                              design-level motion. K.A. Porter, Assembly- of Building Sciences, which develops
cal Survey (USGS) shows, a hypothetical                           Based Vulnerability of Buildings and Its Uses much of the nation’s seismic design
magnitude-7.0 earthquake on the Hay-                              in Seismic Performance Evaluation and Risk- provisions). Detailed maps and data cat-
ward fault in the San Francisco Bay area                          Management Decision-Making, Doctoral                aloged in Figure 5 on page 38 indicate
would produce shaking up to 50 percent                            Dissertation, Stanford University, Stan-            large earthquakes could affect virtually
stronger than design-level shaking over                           ford, CA, and ProQuest Co., Ann Arbor, MI, any metropolis west of Denver, plus Okla-
a wide section of the urbanized East Bay                          pub. 99-95274, https://bit.ly/2mdXxa6.              homa, seven states of the central United
as shown in Figure 3. K.A. Porter, Societal                       An important fact to remember here: new States, South Carolina, and New England.
Consequences of Current Building Code Per-                        buildings are not designed to be earth-             Nor is that catalog exhaustive. Alaska
formance Objectives for Earthquakes (2018),                       quake proof. A small but nonzero fraction experiences frequent strong earthquakes,
https://bit.ly/2kxuIFc; S.T. Detweiler and                        of them are expected to collapse when               and earthquakes could realistically shake
A.M. Wein, eds., The HayWired Earthquake                          subjected to design-level motion—the                New York City, Washington, DC, Hawaii,
Scenario—Engineering Implication, Scientific                      orange color in Figure 3. It seems highly           Puerto Rico, and other US locations with
Investigations Report 2017–5013, https://                         plausible that buildings that had been              the kind of buildings discussed here. See
bit.ly/2Yx3OiK. The authors and review-                           largely optimized to be just safe enough            Figure 6, page 38, for a simplified seis-
ers of these studies include renowned                             to pass code without brittle welds are too          mic hazard map of the United States. The
engineers, experts with decades of profes-                        weak to resist collapse because they do             USGS provides a free, authoritative, online
sional experience designing and assessing                         contain a lot of brittle welds, when they           tool for estimating how frequently any
buildings and developing the design stan-                         are subjected to the earthquake for which given US location will endure any given
dards on which building codes rely.                               they were designed. The various analyses level of shaking. USGS, Unified Hazard
    One of the most notable outcomes                              mentioned above merely reinforce this               Tool (2018), https://on.doi.gov/2qQmFE7.
of the SAC steel study was a survey of                            intuition.                                          Although any given building may have
Published in Probate & Property, Volume 33, No 6 © 2019 by the American Bar Association. Reproduced with permission. All rights reserved. This information or any portion thereof may not be
copied or disseminated in any form or by any means or stored in an electronic database or retrieval system without the express written consent of the American Bar Association.
 November/December 2019
                              37
First the Earth Quakes, then the Law Suits - SPA Risk ...
Figure 5. An authoritative map of ground shaking in realistic future earthquake scenarios.
                                                                          Each star indicates the epicenter of one such scenario. Warmer colors indicate stronger
Figure 4. A USGS map of faults in the San                                 shaking in one of the maps. USGS, 2014 Building Seismic Safety Council (BSSC)
Francisco Bay area capable of producing                                   Catalog, https://earthquake.usgs.gov/scenarios/catalog.
earthquakes of magnitude 6.7 or greater, along
with the chance that each will do so within the
coming 30 years. USGS Earthquake Outlook for
the San Francisco Bay Region, 2014-2043, Fact
Sheet 2016-3020, version 1.1, http://dx.doi.
org/10.3133/fs20163020.

   only a small chance of experiencing
   design-level shaking in any given year, the
   chance that many buildings will experi-
   ence design-level or greater higher shaking
   in an urban earthquake the next few
   decades is fairly high.

   It Is Difficult to Be Unaware of the
   Problem
   Structural engineers have publicized the
   problem to the general public. The New                                Figure 6. Simplified 2014 hazard map. Any place colored green or warmer can reasonably be
   York Times included a long article on Janu-                           considered to have at least moderate seismicity. USGS, https://earthquake.usgs.gov/hazards/
   ary 16, 1995, quoting prominent structural                            hazmaps/conterminous/2014/images/HazardMap2014_lg.jpg.
   engineers and explicitly warning that
   steel-frame buildings could be seriously
   damaged or collapse in earthquakes. Seth
   Mydans, Los Angeles’s Steel-Frame Build-                          the problem is huge. In 2000, each beam-                         that $1 million to deal with an earthquake
   ings: Quake-Proof or Not?, N.Y. Times, Jan.                       column connection cost approximately                             that may or may not occur during their
   16, 1995, https://nyti.ms/2K9jO0Q; see                            $25,000 to fix. A single building can con-                       ownership period. Neither the threat of
   also Kathryn Wexler, Northridge Quake’s                           tain hundreds of such connections, so the                        liability nor any market force that values
   Costly Legacy, Wash. Post, Jan. 18, 1996,                         fix could cost more than $1 million per                          safer buildings has yet proven to be suffi-
   https://wapo.st/2GChnTO; Greg Brouwer,                            building. Secondly, building codes gener-                        cient motive for that voluntary expense in
   Cracked!, L.A. Wkly., Sept. 1, 1999, https://                     ally do not act retroactively. The hundreds                      the absence of legal requirement.
   bit.ly/2KgFwAk.                                                   of buildings in question complied with                               Another issue may be the appearance
                                                                     the code at the time they were built,                            of low probability. Some of the authors of
   Why So Little Has Been Done                                       so owners of existing buildings are not                          the studies alluded to here write about the
   For several reasons, most of these build-                         required to remediate these connections.                         risk in 2,500-year shaking (approximately
   ings are still with us. The cost to remediate                     Owners would have to voluntarily spend                           50 percent greater than design-level
    Published in Probate & Property, Volume 33, No 6 © 2019 by the American Bar Association. Reproduced with permission. All rights reserved. This information or any portion thereof may not be
    copied or disseminated in any form or by any means or stored in an electronic database or retrieval system without the express written consent of the American Bar Association.

                                            38                                                                                                                         November/December 2019
First the Earth Quakes, then the Law Suits - SPA Risk ...
shaking). Such a rare event may seem safe                        ordinances akin to previous mandatory                            grounded the aircraft series until further
to ignore. But that sense of safety van-                         retrofit requirements for unreinforced                           notice, leaving the 391 remaining deliv-
ishes when one takes a societal viewpoint                        masonry bearing wall buildings, tilt-up                          ered aircraft suddenly inoperable and, for
of risk: the risk to one building may be                         concrete, soft-story woodframe, and oth-                         the foreseeable future, worthless. Law-
low, but a single large earthquake on any                        ers. Shortly after the 1994 Northridge                           suits came quickly from families of crash
of the many long, active faults in Califor-                      earthquake, the City of Los Angeles recog-                       victims and others. Sinéad Baker, Boeing
nia can affect millions of buildings, and                        nized that “the damage to these welded                           737 Max: List of Lawsuits and Investigations
there are many such faults. The sum of a                         steel moment frame buildings could                               Boeing, FAA Face, Business Insider (2019),
lot of small chances can be great.                               expose occupants of these buildings to a                         https://bit.ly/2OFiVTc.
    A third issue is probably a combina-                         potential life-safety risk in future earth-                          The parallel to pre-Northridge welded
tion of natural inclination, constraints of                      quakes, and the City of Los Angeles                              steel moment-frame building seems
the engineering profession, and self-inter-                      must protect its population and prop-                            obvious: if only one of these readily iden-
est. Structural engineers of the authors’                        erty and enforce the Building Code so as                         tifiable buildings collapses for predictable
acquaintance do not like to sound alarm-                         to provide effective protection to all its                       reasons in an inevitable earthquake, the
ist, and many depend for their living                            citizens.” Los Angeles, Cal., Ordinance                          rest of the buildings could quickly change
on being able to design lighter, less-                           170406, https://bit.ly/2LSM7E6. The                              from assets to severe liabilities to their
expensive buildings that nonetheless                             city required inspection within 180 days                         owners, investors, designers, tenants,
comply with the building codes—engi-                             of 280 nonresidential steel-frame build-                         local, state, and federal officials, taxing
neers sometimes refer to that process as                         ings in a strong-shaken part of the city                         authorities, people who trade with dis-
value engineering. Structural engineers                          and required repair of damaged welded                            placed occupants, or otherwise indirectly
work primarily at the direction of the                           moment connections. Id.                                          rely on them. The liability differences
owner, who is bound to make his new                                  Twenty-four years after the Northridge                       between buildings and aircraft might not
building meet only the requirements of                           earthquake and 29 years after the Loma                           be great.
the building code, and who (with few                             Prieta earthquake, a group of experts
exceptions) has no explicit legal obliga-                        led by the Applied Technology Coun-                              Potential for Legal Liability: Both
tion to strengthen an existing building.                         cil advised the City of San Francisco to                         Criminal and Civil
To voluntarily expend millions of dol-                           develop inspection, evaluation, and repair                       Under tort law, foreseeability must be
lars strengthening an existing building                          provisions for older steel-frame build-                          proven by a preponderance of the evi-
can place the owner at a financial dis-                          ings. Applied Technology Council, Tall                           dence demonstrating that a party’s action
advantage relative to his neighbors. The                         Buildings Safety Strategy (2018), http://                        or inaction could reasonably result in
engineer who urges such an expense runs                          onesanfrancisco.org/esip.                                        the injury at issue in the case. In most
a substantial risk of losing a client. And                           In 2018, the California legislature                          cases, the decision about whether an
after all, the risk of any given occupant                        passed a bill that would have required                           action or inaction was negligent is consid-
dying in a high-rise collapse is low, much                       local jurisdictions to create an inventory                       ered a question of fact to be determined
lower than other leading causes of death                         of potentially hazardous older steel-frame                       by a trial jury of six to 12 ordinary citi-
in the United States.                                            buildings (among other unacceptably                              zens. Normally, the plaintiff must be
    FEMA doesn’t fix the problem because                         hazardous building types). But Governor                          able to show that the injury was reason-
FEMA doesn’t own the problem, at least                           Brown vetoed the bill for funding and                            ably predictable to a person of ordinary
until a disaster occurs. Although it sup-                        schedule reasons, as opposed to objec-                           intelligence and prudence. But people
ported the study that quantified the                             tions regarding the hazardous nature of                          and organizations who hold themselves
problem, FEMA’s mission does not yet                             the buildings.                                                   out as experts are held to a higher stan-
include mandating costly building ret-                                                                                            dard of what they should have foreseen.
rofits. Structural engineers have strong                         The Boeing 737 MAX as a                                          Landlords and all those who invite oth-
reasons not to press for a solution.                             Cautionary Tale                                                  ers to visit or occupy premises, including
    Because few others in authority even                         What will happen when one of these                               employers and tenants, have long been
know that the problem exists, it has not                         buildings collapses? The history of the                          held to a standard that requires them to
yet been seriously addressed. But the                            Boeing 737 MAX might provide a clue.                             not only warn of known hazards, but also
problem of thousands of older steel build-                       The Boeing 737 MAX is a narrow-body                              to fix the hazard. As the Association of
ings with brittle welds is not going away.                       aircraft series designed and produced                            Bay Area Governments points out,
High-rise buildings may in a sense be                            by Boeing Commercial Airplanes as the                            “[d]evelopers may be liable for earth-
designed for a life of 50 years, but they                        fourth generation of the Boeing 737. It                          quake-related damages and injuries
are likely to stand for centuries and to be                      entered service in May 2017. Two fatal                           under theories of implied warranty or
there when, not if, a strong earthquake                          crashes of 737 MAX 8 aircraft in Octo-                           strict liability. Designing a building to
occurs nearby.                                                   ber 2018 and March 2019 killed a total                           meet code standards does not act as a
    A few cities are dealing with these                          of 346 passengers and crew, after which                          shield to liability. However, not meeting
buildings. Some have enacted new                                 regulatory authorities around the world                          earthquake-related codes will surely result
Published in Probate & Property, Volume 33, No 6 © 2019 by the American Bar Association. Reproduced with permission. All rights reserved. This information or any portion thereof may not be
copied or disseminated in any form or by any means or stored in an electronic database or retrieval system without the express written consent of the American Bar Association.
 November/December 2019
                              39
By delaying remediation efforts, owners
                                                               are externalizing their risk on tenants, future
                                                               owners, and the people who live, work,
                                                               walk by, or visit nearby buildings onto which
                                                               these buildings could collapse.

in being judged negligent.” Ass’n of Bay                         died. Luis Ferré-Sadurni, After Limo Crash                       to a few other well-known and com-
Area Gov’ts, Summary Information, Busi-                          that Killed 20, a Call for More Regulation,                      mon building types. Considering older
ness Liability for Earthquake Hazards &                          N. Y. Times, Oct. 14, 2018, https://nyti.                        steel-frame buildings, multiple highly
Losses (2004).                                                   ms/2Om6tau.                                                      reputable studies show that large but
    By delaying remediation efforts, own-                           Architects, engineers, developers, gov-                       not-exceedingly-rare earthquakes can
ers are externalizing their risk on tenants,                     ernment officials, and all others involved                       realistically cause several such build-
future owners, and the people who live,                          in decisions about whether to repair a                           ings to collapse. Engineers, FEMA, and
work, walk by, or visit nearby buildings                         known life-safety hazard should know                             local officials in some cities have been
onto which these buildings could col-                            that legal liability may involve a jury of                       aware of and concerned about the
lapse. By delaying remediation, owners                           ordinary people evaluating their legal                           problem since at least 1994. Building
and all others potentially responsible for                       culpability for failure to take foreseeable                      owners and the general public have been
inviting, authorizing, or requiring poten-                       natural hazards into account when mak-                           exposed to coverage in the popular press
tial victims to occupy or to be exposed                          ing a decision that later resulted in harm                       explaining how the 1994 Northridge
to the hazards created by these unsafe                           or death. As has already been shown,                             earthquake heavily damaged older steel-
structures are inviting liability. They may                      engineers, local, state, and federal offi-                       frame buildings, showing them to be far
even face criminal charges in the event of                       cials have been aware of the problem for                         more dangerous than their designers
serious injury or death arguably resulting                       decades. With extensive coverage in the                          had thought, and that future large earth-
from failure to repair a known hazard.                           local, national, print, and electronic press,                    quakes pose a particular life-safety threat
Such was the case in 2006 when the pri-                          building owners by now can be reason-                            to these buildings. Such earthquakes are
vate owner of the Ka Loko Dam in Kauai,                          ably expected to know that earthquakes                           coming, quite possibly within the next
Hawaii, was indicted for common law                              pose an unexpectedly high life-safety                            few decades, whether we do anything
murder for his actions and failure to act                        threat to these buildings.                                       about it or not. We have already lost
before that reservoir breached, killing                             Fundamentally, government exists                              more than 20 years of advanced warning.
seven people. The owner was not alleged                          to prevent us from harming each other.                               Shall we continue to ignore the prob-
to have the criminal intent usually                              When businesses, employers, engineers,                           lem, in the hope that it doesn’t really exist
required to support a murder charge, but                         and architects combine with govern-                              or that somebody else will solve it? Even
his actions were considered sufficiently                         ment and collectively fail in their duty                         skeptical engineers find it realistic that a
reckless as to provide the requisite intent                      to provide safe places for people to live                        single large earthquake could cause sev-
to support an indictment for murder. In                          and work, the people who are harmed                              eral of these buildings to collapse. The
2013, he was permitted to plead guilty to                        may well seek to share their misery with                         collapse of only one or two could kill
a lesser charge of reckless endangerment,                        everyone who contributed to their mis-                           thousands of people and cause public
after paying substantial compensation to                         fortune. Decision-makers who ignore the                          confidence in these buildings to evapo-
the victims’ families. Tim Sakahara, James                       very real threat of unsafe buildings may                         rate. Like the crash of two Boeing 737
Pflueger Enters Plea Deal in Fatal Dam                           be called upon to answer for their actions                       MAX aircraft, the remaining stock would
Break, Hawaii News Now, July 18, 2013,                           or inaction. For more information about                          flip from financial assets into severe lia-
https://bit.ly/2GEbOnA.                                          civil and criminal liability related to                          bilities for a vast web of stakeholders. To
    The Ka Loko case is not an anomaly.                          natural hazards, see Edward Thomas,                              fix these buildings will be very expensive.
There has been widespread media atten-                           Natural Hazard Disaster Risk Reduction                           But if we do not do so before the earth-
tion focusing on an increasing level of                          as an Element of Resilience: Considerations                      quake, just wait until the bill comes due
criminal prosecutions in situations as                           about Insurance and Litigation (2019),                           for not fixing them. That bill could arrive
diverse as selling contaminated peanuts,                         https://bit.ly/2kxpzgo.                                          tomorrow and, one way or another, most
                                                                                                                                                                                               istockphoto

violating mine safety laws, and most                                                                                              of us will be stuck with part of the tab. n
recently operating an allegedly unsafe                           Conclusion
limousine in a situation where 20 people                         Much of what has been said here applies
Published in Probate & Property, Volume 33, No 6 © 2019 by the American Bar Association. Reproduced with permission. All rights reserved. This information or any portion thereof may not be
copied or disseminated in any form or by any means or stored in an electronic database or retrieval system without the express written consent of the American Bar Association.

                                        40                                                                                                                         November/December 2019
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