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Fifty years ago this Sunday, Kern County was shaken to its roots by the third largest earthquake in recorded California history.

The town of Tehachapi was heavily damaged, and 12 people were killed. A month later, an aftershock heavily damaged Bakersfield, killing two.

Today, some Kern County residents vividly remember the earthquake, but several more would find themselves unprepared in the event of another big quake.

City continues efforts to make buildings safe

By CHRISTINE MALAMANIG, Californian staff writer
e-mail: cmalamanig@bakersfield.com

Monday July 22, 2002, 07:00:00 PM

Fifty years after the 1952 earthquake brought down many of Bakersfield's downtown brick buildings, the city still has a problem: What to do with the unreinforced brick buildings that survived but have not yet met toughened local building codes?

Overall, the city has made progress on its list of 200-some buildings it identified as unreinforced masonry 14 years ago. Most have been retrofitted, while others have some retrofit work under way.

However, nearly two dozen buildings, primarily in the downtown and Baker Street areas, have not met the city's earthquake building codes.

The city says it is doing what it can.

Will it be enough?

Close to 400 buildings were damaged in the two earthquakes that struck Kern County in 1952, and 90 were torn down.

The first earthquake, measuring in at 7.5 on the Richter scale on July 21, 1952, killed 12 people in Tehachapi. The most damaging in a series of aftershocks that struck on Aug. 22 killed two people in Bakersfield and injured more than 30. Combined, the quakes caused $48 million in damage countywide.

Many of the buildings damaged during the earthquakes were unreinforced masonry work, meaning they were brick on top of brick.

Buildings that are reinforced now have steel rods that run through the brick walls. The steel rods connect to wood panels which are anchored to the ceiling and floor.

The steel helps a brick wall bend rather than break in the event of an earthquake, said Mike Quon, a city civil engineer who helps monitor the city's efforts to bring unreinforced masonry buildings up to city code.

Unreinforced brick walls have no tension and are more likely to snap, he said.

Meeting code

Although many buildings were rebuilt or repaired after the earthquakes, it took more than 30 years for the state and city governments to adopt requirements addressing unreinforced masonry building.

In 1986, the California Legislature enacted the Unreinforced Masonry building law, which required local building departments to identify all hazardous unreinforced masonry buildings. The law also required building departments to develop and start a mitigation program to reduce the hazard and submit a progress report to the state's Seismic Safety Commission.

In 1988, Bakersfield city staff identified 199 unreinforced masonry buildings within city limits and notified property owners of the state requirements.

Two years later, the City Council required building owners to complete a seismic safety analysis of their buildings, giving them a two-year deadline.

The new program didn't sit well with local building owners, and in 1993, the council revised it and extended the deadline to 1998.

Cathy Palla, who owns commercial property in downtown Bakersfield, was involved in the Downtown Business Association's efforts to help amend the city's first ordinance.

"It became very clear to us: Complying with the ordinance would be condemning our building," she said.

The first ordinance required owners to retrofit their property to 1990 building standards or tear down the property, she said.

Much of the retrofitting work was done during a five-year window between 1993 and 1998. That's when the city offered incentives through a grant that reimbursed $5,000 of the retrofitting costs and waived other building codes.

In 1997, the council added another requirement: Owners of unreinforced masonry buildings had to identify their buildings as "nonconforming URM structures," which places buyers on notice when the building is sold.

Of the 199 buildings the city identified as unreinforced masonry, 119 have been retrofitted, demolished or were exempted from requirements, according to a March 2001 Bakersfield building department report. The report also showed that 44 buildings were in some stage of retrofit work at the time.

The report showed 15 buildings had not been retrofitted and were vacant, and another 21 buildings had not been retrofitted and were occupied. Five other unreinforced buildings were annexed into city limits from the county.

All of these buildings were built before 1952, and most were built in the early 1940s, said Dennis Fidler, Bakersfield building director.

The city does little currently to push these remaining buildings into retrofitting status, which can cost building owners $15,000 to more than $80,000, he said.

The city doesn't impose any fines for those not retrofitted, Quon said.

And it doesn't enforce posting signs at building entrances to show "nonconforming" status.

"(Owners) are supposed to let the public know," Fidler said. "If they don't, it's a legal matter. It's not in our hands."