As California’s fast-growing Inland Empire churns out new housing tracts, the city of Redlands is a throwback to an older, more regal era.
The college town is graced by historic mansions, old orange groves and a vintage downtown that stands in deep contrast to the region’s big-box shopping centers and drive-thru restaurants. The town center is defined by century-old buildings filled with children’s boutiques, bakeries and cafes.
But danger lurks for these brick buildings: As many as 74 in the city are not retrofitted to withstand major earthquakes, putting the public at risk should the bricks start to topple onto sidewalks, cars and pedestrians.
As many as 640 buildings in more than a dozen Inland Empire cities have been marked as dangerous after decades of warnings, according to a Los Angeles Times analysis of building and safety records. These cities are far behind coastal regions of California, which have retrofitted thousands of buildings after devastating earthquakes exposed how deadly they can be.
The risks are all the more concerning because the Inland Empire is particularly vulnerable to a major earthquake.
Three of the state’s most dangerous faults — the San Andreas, the San Jacinto and the Cucamonga — intersect in this region east of downtown Los Angeles. The San Andreas alone, an ominous line visible from the foothills, is capable of unleashing a devastating magnitude 8 quake.
Any shaking would be amplified by the precarious soil the region is built on — a basin of loose sediment that would rock like a bowl of jelly.
The Inland Empire is uniquely unprepared for a major earthquake in large part because its economy has struggled in ways more affluent coastal California has not. City officials and residents say myriad issues weigh on them and seismic safety rarely tops the list.
Antonio Canul, a longtime restaurant owner in San Bernardino, shrugged off the risks and said there was no point in saving the city from an earthquake when it was already in such economic shambles. In the 34 years that he’s lived in the city, Canul said he’s had more pressing matters to worry about.
“I’m just here to do business, feed people and make a living,” said Canul, who cooks, cleans and serves each day, starting at 6 a.m. in an old brick building downtown. “If you’re gonna die, you’re gonna die. Maybe it’s cancer, maybe it’s an earthquake.”
Then there are the other obstacles: Poor data upkeep. Building chiefs who stick around for only a few years. Little, if any, public pressure. In dozens of interviews and records requests, the Times analysis found a trail of starts and stops by officials in each city to identify and update its lists of old brick buildings. One list dated back 27 years; others were marked by hand or undecipherable.
While Los Angeles, San Francisco and others have charged ahead on retrofitting many types of vulnerable buildings, many here still have not addresses what structural engineers say are the most basic, most dangerous, most unsupported type of building.
Dangerous materials
California learned the dangers of brick construction when a major earthquake struck Long Beach in 1933, crumbling schools, churches and shops. The quake killed 120 people. These so-called unreinforced masonry buildings, or URMs, are vulnerable because the mortar essentially crumbles apart during shaking, bringing down the roof and walls.
Cities across California now ban this type of construction. URMs that had already been built were mostly left to fate. But as its history of destruction continued — Sylmar in 1971, Loma Prieta in 1989 — a number of cities found the political will to compile lists of addresses and force owners to either demolish or add reinforcement to their brick buildings.
When a magnitude 6.5 earthquake in 2003 struck downtown Paso Robles, the only two people who died were found crushed under an avalanche of bricks outside a historic building. The roof had slid onto the sidewalk, taking the clock tower with it. The city, which had a retrofit law on the books, had given the owner until 2018 to complete a retrofit.
“They are really dangerous. … Even with moderate earthquakes, we see — all the time — collapse of these structures,” said Benson Shing, a University of San Diego structural engineering professor who has researched the subject extensively. “There’s no spine. You can see the blocks just one on top of another. So when you shake the structure, it will just rock and collapse.”
In Los Angeles, after three decades of chasing down the owners of 8,080 URMs, officials say there are now only three left in the city that still need to be retrofitted or demolished. When the Northridge earthquake struck, the retrofits saved lives. No one died in a brick building.
“We have to deal with it one way or the other, sooner or later,” said Ramon Hernandez, who became Colton’s building official 18 months ago and has been retracing the steps of his many predecessors. Hernandez drove around the city in December and updated a building list from 1991 in response to a Times inquiry. He said he’s reached out to owners and is trying to find a solution.
Others have thrown up their hands, pointing to the same challenges their cities faced decades ago that are still holding them back.
Forcing owners to retrofit or demolish these buildings just doesn’t make sense in a predominantly working-class region like the Inland Empire, some city officials said. Many treasure their historical character, and a city could be put at an economic disadvantage if neighboring cities don’t enforce the same strict rules.
“The jurisdiction that does not require retrofit can out-compete their neighbor that does require retrofit when attracting new business,” said Mike Gardner, a councilman in Riverside, where the historic Mission Inn and some of its surrounding brick buildings have been retrofitted. The city has as many as 160 URMs left, the most of any city examined by The Times. “There is also a risk that buildings that have not been retrofitted may be abandoned by their owners in economically depressed areas,” Gardner said.
