Renewed earthquake paranoia has hit Los Angeles since an Oct. 12 report in the Los Angeles Times labeled more than 1,000 buildings as "at risk" for collapse in a quake. In response, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti (D) promised to appoint a quake "czar" to determine if retrofits of the city's older reinforced-concrete structures are needed.
The Times' list—compiled through building-permit research and an owner survey—includes mostly reinforced-concrete buildings engineered between the 1960s and the mid-1980s. "This class of building exists in every major city," says Ronald Hamburger, head of structural engineering for Simpson Gumpertz & Heger Inc.