Seismic Upgrades
If you have read the newspapers or listened to the radio lately, seismic, earthquake retrofitting, or seismic upgrades, as they are often called, continues to be a hot topic.
Concrete, post and beam buildings/Tilt-Ups, Wood-Frame “soft story” structures and unreinforced masonry structures are especially at risk.
The City of Los Angeles, for example, has enacted a series of seismic ordinances.
They are even considering going as far as identifying and publishing building addresses. In doing so a side effect could be that you might get less rent for your space if you are on the “list” and have not retrofitted your structure.
Long before the Northridge earthquake, long before the Whittier earthquake
Hopkins was leading the way in seismic retrofitting. When the 1971 Sylmar
earthquake occurred, George C. Hopkins Construction Co., Inc. was immediately
sought after to evaluate and reconstruct many damaged structures.
When the City of Glendale Parking Structure failed in the Northridge earthquake Hopkins was their first phone call. For the City of Glendale and many private Owners and Developers like them, we provided temporary shoring, designed the fix and completed the repair.
Almost every Adaptive Reuse project has a seismic upgrade component. While we are not engineers, we have partnerships with them, and we understand the issues, techniques and costs for the seismic upgrades for all of these structures.
Lucy Jones, USGS seismologist, has been quoted as saying “You don’t get to pretend this isn’t going to happen. The earthquake in inevitable.”
Today, we are a leader in promoting voluntary seismic upgrades as a part of every remodel that we do.
Let us bring out team of design professionals and our expertise in construction to upgrade your building now. Be prepared, not disappointed when the next earthquake happens.
