Safety Assessment Program Evaluator Student Manual

CA Emergency Mgmt. Agency Safety Assessment Program Evaluator Manual April 20113.0 Evaluating Buildings3.1 Occupancy of Residential Structures to Reduce Shelter DemandResidential structures play a major role in the overall recovery from a disaster, therefore theirevaluation is of great importance. A major point in allowing habitation of a house or apartmentis, what makes a residence inhabitable?Major studies have been done to anticipate the short term and long term sheltering needsfollowing a major earthquake in the San Francisco Bay Area. (As a reminder, the M6.9 LomaPrieta Earthquake affected the Bay Area, but was not technically a Bay Area earthquake inorigin, having its epicenter in the Santa Cruz Mountains about 60 miles from downtown SanFrancisco. A similar magnitude event on one of the Bay Area faults would have far moredamaging consequences to the heavily populated San Francisco Bay Area.) The results revealthat as many as 154,000 persons could become homeless as a result of a major earthquake on theHayward or San Andreas Faults. Questions on how these will be sheltered for the short term, orprovided long term shelter while rebuilding is going on, remain difficult questions.For comparison, the M6.8 Northridge Earthquake damaged residences to the extent that morethan 114,000 households required some sort of temporary housing assistance as a result. Thisincluded both short term and long term assistance, in some cases rental assistance for two tothree years while the individual‟s residence was being repaired.Safety assessment can help to reduce the need for short term sheltering. This section will look atsome of the significant problems related to:Evaluating residential structuresShort term shelteringContinued occupancy within apartment buildings3.1.1 Requirements for OccupancyThe important question relating to the use of residential structures, both single family dwellingsand apartments, is “How much damage prevents the home from being occupied after a disaster?”The California Health and Safety Code states that the minimum requirements include enclosurefrom the elements, running potable water, and working sanitary sewer connections.The threat from whatever damage the disaster has done to the structure can be added to this in apractical sense. It is useful to consider what happened in the 1994 Northridge Earthquake:About 114,000 structures received safety assessmentsAbout 98,000 of these, or 86 percent of the total, were residential structuresAbout 81,000 of the residential structures, or 83 percent of the 98,000 residentialstructures, were deemed to be safe enough to occupy.The remaining 17,000 residential structures sustained sufficient damage to be postedUNSAFE, or to have some form of restriction on their use with a RESTRICTED USEplacard.79