Quake Funds Imperiled

SACRAMENTO — As scientists uncover new dangers posed by a fault under densely populated areas of Los Angeles, two programs that protect the public against earthquake hazards could be cut in a Republican push to find more money for closing the state’s budget hole.

Seismic safety experts say the cuts being considered would hamper their ability to track the distribution of major shaking immediately after earthquakes, to determine what buildings endured structural damage and to send emergency crews where they are most needed. They would also halt production of seismic hazard maps that local planning departments use to determine which areas pose the most serious dangers for construction.

“It’s a small amount of money, but it has a large impact on public safety,” Darryl Young, director of the state Department of Conservation, said of the programs, which cost the state $7.7 million annually. “Without these programs, you wind up with buildings like in Mexico City, which were poorly constructed and could not withstand earthquakes.”

But some Republicans on the Assembly Budget Committee say the effort to determine shaking distribution, called the Strong Motion Instrumentation Program, is still in its early stages and will require thousands more instruments to be placed around the state over the next 25 to 75 years.

A staff analysis justifies suspending that program and the seismic hazard mapping program to help close the state’s shortfall of as much as $35 billion because “technological advances may render this program obsolete before it is completed.”

Both programs were pulled from a list of items that were approved for funding by an Assembly budget subcommittee, controlled by Democrats, earlier in the month.

They have been set aside for future debate at the request of Republican members. When that will occur is unclear; lawmakers are taking a spring break this week.

The move has alarmed seismic safety experts throughout the state. It comes as scientists warn that the recently discovered Puente Hills fault is capable of triggering a magnitude 7.5 temblor directly beneath downtown Los Angeles.

“Many of the people who fund these programs don’t fully understand why we need this information,” said Chris Poland, president and chief executive of Degenkolb Engineers. “These programs will make construction safer.”

The Strong Motion Instrumentation Program has more than 1,000 data recording instruments throughout the state, with a large concentration in Southern California. The plan is to triple that number, so there would be an instrument in every ZIP Code in California. Seismic safety experts say that in the absence of the instruments, they can only speculate on how strongly the ground shook in a particular area where buildings were damaged. They have learned that speculation has been off the mark in many cases, making it difficult to reform building codes to prevent future damage.

Poland said suspending funding for even 12 months would set the programs back years because instruments would fall into disrepair and dozens of highly trained scientists would be laid off and not easily replaced once the programs returned to operation.

Lucy Jones, who heads the Southern California division of the U.S. Geological Survey’s earthquake hazard team, said the instrumentation program allows scientists to pinpoint the buildings with the most damage within minutes after a quake.

That’s in contrast to 1994, she said, when experts had to wait “until the sun came up” to find where the most damage was after the Northridge earthquake.

Jones said the state had planned to expand the program to allow safety officials to immediately determine where to send ambulances, firetrucks and other emergency vehicles within seconds of a major earthquake.

At the Los Angeles Department of Building and Safety, officials are concerned about suspension of the seismic hazard mapping program, which has been producing maps that show areas at risk of shaking and sinking from loose soil connected with a quake.

The city uses the maps in a computer program that detects whether a proposed construction site carries a seismic risk that should be checked out by geologists before building.