Earthquake Safety: California's Comprehensive New Program

After many years of making progress slowly through ad hoc and piecemeal seismic safety measures adopted after damaging earthquakes, California has recently been moving toward more comprehensive seismic policy development, and in 1985 enacted the California Earthquake Hazards Reduction Act. The new law is a landmark in seismic policymaking, establishing a system of comprehensive and continuous planning, plan implementation, monitoring of results, and plan revision. It also adopted as a state policy goal the achievement of significant earthquake-hazard reduction by the year 2000. The program set up by the new law will further earthquake safety in six major areas: (1) existing development, (2) emergency preparedness and response, (3) new development, (4) long-term recovery, (5) education and public information, and (6) research and its application. The Seismic Safety Commission, an independent policy body that advises the Legislature and Governor on earthquake-related matters, was chosen to lead the program, working with other agencies representing a wide range of concerns. The first five-year program was published in September 1986, the “year 2” revision and progress report in September 1987, and the first follow-up supplement (for local government) in January 1988. The new program is already making respectable progress, although not as rapidly as the initial schedule called for.