Page 36 - AAGLA-JUNE 2022

Member Update
“Are we prepared at home, in our place of business,
in our hospitals, schools and community?”
Will Earthquake Denial Make Disaster Worse?
CScientists say The Big One is coming, and results may be catastrophic
By Ali Sahabi, Chief Operating Officer, Optimum Seismic
alifornia has seen the deadly Once we have carefully considered the potential losses impacts of serious earthquakes we could incur from one or more serious earthquakes, we as seen in this photo of the need to plan what we can do before they strike to protect 1994 Northridge earthquake. our investments, incomes, buildings and tenants. Then we Unfortunately, too many of us need to act. Now.
have failed to learn from these experiences and instead gamble economic futures on the belief that major earthquakes won’t strike again!
The Los Angeles Times recently quoted U.S. Geological Survey simulation of a magnitude 7.8 earthquake in Southern California predicting the complete or partial collapse of 50 brittle concrete buildings housing 7,500 people and another five high-rise steel buildings — of a
Many Californians live in a form of earthquake denial. We type known to be seismically vulnerable — holding 5,000 laugh them off, ignore their ever-present threat to our lives people. That’s 12,500 people. And that does not count
and livelihoods. After all, some reason, we’ve lived through earthquakes before. Why should the next one be different?
The stark reality is that protecting ourselves from earthquakes should be on all of our minds. We need to ask ourselves serious questions. Are we prepared at home, in our place of business, in our hospitals, schools and community? How difficult would it be to recover from the mega-quake scientists warn could strike at any moment? How severely would the economic impacts from that disaster harm my investment properties, and impact the economy of our region, state, and the nation?
many other people lost or injured in an estimated 100,000 buildings in California considered even more vulnerable to earthquakes -- soft-story apartment buildings built before the 1980s.
From an economic standpoint, international modeling firm AIR Worldwide estimates losses from a quake of that magnitude at upwards of $300 billion. That figure was supported by data analytics firm CoreLogic, which said an earthquake of magnitude 8.3 along the San Andreas could damage up to 3.5 million homes, resulting in reconstruction costs of $289 billion. Please turn to page 39
36 JUNE 2022 • WWW.AAGLA.ORG