Council members vote to retrofit Berkeley.
After the 1989 Loma Prieta Earthquake, the City Council decided to retrofit Berkeley and bolt down the City with seismic retrofits paid for out of Berkeley City tax funds.
Please see this article on how the City Failed to Retrofit Berkeley and spent millions of taxpayer money for nothing.
This occurred after the 1989 earthquake where over half the residents wanting to bolt down and retrofit Berkeley mandated that 1/2 of one percent of the purchase price of a house be used to fund bolting and bracing of the new owner’s house. This amounted to a large sum of money being used to retrofit Berkeley’s housing stock to prevent homelessness and structural damage.
Berkeley Retrofits its housing Stock without a Retrofit Building Code.
At the same time, the City of Berkeley relied on the California Building Code to provide code guidance in terms of what would be deemed a seismic retrofit. As it turned out, Berkeley approved anything so long as “retrofit” was on the building permit. This resulted in houses being bolted without installing the other necessary parts of a shear wall or the use of hardware that did not do anything to protect it from earthquakes. The Berkeley Disaster Commission determined that 20 million dollars was spent on bolting and earthquake bracing that would not protect these homes from structural damage.
