What are Soft Story Buildings? These are multi-level structures built with a first floor that is much less rigid (soft) than the floors above, such as in an apartment with tuck under parking. They can and have failed in significant seismic activity due to unreinforced openings on the ground floor which caused far more movement than the soft story building could withstand, resulting in the upper floors COLLAPSING on top of it. A huge project to soft story retrofit Los Angeles has begun to help prevent this from occurring in the future.

There are thousands of soft story structures in Los Angeles alone. Retrofitting soft story structures has now become mandatory by the City of Los Angeles as of November 22, 2015.

Soft Story Retrofitting Isn't Just Recommended, It’s the Law

As of November of 2015, the City of Los Angeles has signed into law that structures that are in danger of being catastrophically damaged in the event of an earthquake are to be upgraded within a finite amount of time. This includes soft story retrofitting in Los Angeles county buildings. Los Angeles now has the nation's toughest earthquake safety rules.

From the Los Angeles Times: “Under the law, property owners will have seven years to fix wood apartments and 25 years to fix concrete buildings. The city has already identified about 13,500 apartment complexes that officials suspect need repairs. A Times investigation in 2013 found more than 1,000 older concrete structures — including landmark buildings in downtown, Hollywood and Westwood — that require close scrutiny for retrofitting.”

Many more cities in the region are following suit and mandating the same soft story retrofit Los Angeles has signed into law. This is in an effort to avoid devastation and to safeguard residents from harm that has been caused by large earthquakes such as the Northridge quake in 1994.

Seismic Brothers are highly-qualified and has extensive experience with soft story retrofitting.