City Favors $120,000 Quake Study of Buildings in Gaslamp Quarter

A San Diego City Council committee voted, 3-1, Wednesday in favor of a $120,000 study of unreinforced masonry buildings downtown that could be unstable during an earthquake.

About 750 such buildings in the Gaslamp Quarter and in other older areas probably would collapse in a quake of 6 to 6.5 on the Richter scale, a state seismologist told the council members, and remedies are costly.

Michael Reichle, senior seismologist with the Department of Conservation, said safety hazards in the unreinforced buildings are high. A person would be 2,000 times safer in an earthquake in a well-built wooden house than in one of the older brick buildings, he said.

San Diego is the only major city in the state that is exempt from state requirements to begin earthquake safety improvement programs by 1990 and to complete repairs or demolition of the substandard structures by the turn of the century.

The $120,000 allocation favored by the City Council Public Services and Safety Committee would finance studies to determine what must be done to improve the unstable structures and to weigh the cost of bringing them up to safety standards or tearing them down. The money is included in the proposed 1988 city budget now being reviewed by the council.

The city and owners of the substandard buildings face possible liability if a program to solve the problem is not started, the committee was told.