Thirty years ago, on Jan. 17, 1994, the 6.7 magnitude Northridge earthquake struck the San Fernando Valley, killing 57 people. It was felt in San Diego and as far away as Las Vegas and Ensenada, and caused an estimated $20 billion in damage.
California Earthquake Authority’s Chief Mitigation Officer Janiele Maffei said they learned a lot from that earthquake. “The Northridge earthquake absolutely drives a lot of what we do in terms of earthquake policy,” Maffei said.
The California Residential Mitigation Program established Earthquake Brace and Bolt or EBB to provide grants to help California homeowners pay to retrofit earthquake weaknesses in single-family houses.
“We're going after — really — the most vulnerable type of seismic weakness in houses and we're utilizing the techniques that we've seen since then, work," Maffei said. "The retrofitted house really does work.”
Maffei said the EBB was created to go after one particular kind of earthquake weakness, in houses that were built with crawl spaces rather than on a slab.
“What happens in an earthquake? It's like a giant has put a blanket under your house, and it's kind of trying to pull that blanket out from under your house. Your house wants to stay where it is, and so that house is gonna go back and forth, "Maffei explained. " All the weight of that house, if it's not properly anchored, will just take it right off of the foundation. So if it's 2 feet above the foundation, your house is going to come down that 2 feet. We see crawl spaces that are as tall as 4 to 6 feet tall. You can imagine that's a lot of movement, a lot of damage."
An EBB seismic retrofit means the foundation is bolted to the frame, and walls called “cripple walls” in the crawl space are braced with plywood. This helps prevent the house from sliding or even falling off its foundation during an earthquake.
The California Earthquake Authority estimates over 1.2 million houses have this vulnerability. “Open up that crawl space, take a peek in. You can have a contractor come out and take a look, but it is something that will really go a long way towards protecting your family and your finances," Maffei said.
To qualify for the 2024 Earthquake Brace and Bolt, your home must be wood-framed, built before 1980 and with a raised foundation.
“Since 2014, Earthquake Brace and Bolt has provided grants for over 23,000 houses, so that’s a lot of data," Maffei said. "We've got data on how much it costs in the areas. We've got data on how long it takes.”
Grant money is available up to $3,000 and should cover the majority of the retrofit, but a homeowner may have to pay-out-of-pocket depending on location, size of the house and other factors.
The Earthquake Brace and Bolt open registration runs through Feb. 21. To see if you qualify, go to earthquakebracebolt.com.
