Navigator Award Finalists: Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti and Team
Getting the nation’s second-largest city better prepared for its next seismic disaster.
This is the 24th in a series of profiles on the 50 finalists for Route Fifty’s Navigator Awards program. The first 10 finalists were from the Government Allies and Cross-Sector Partners category. Finalists 11-20 were from the Agency and Department Leadership category. Finalists 21-30 were from the Executive Leadership category. Finalists 31-40 were from the Next Generation category. Finalists 41-50 were from the Data and IT Innovators category. Explore our complete list of 50 finalists.
LOS ANGELES — This past week, officials here in Southern California had a reminder about the very real risk the region faces from large earthquakes. Seismologists were closely watching an unusual swarm of small earthquakes in the Salton Sea near the southern end of the much-feared San Andreas Fault, which has been locked, loaded and ready to unleash a future catastrophic seismic disaster across the region.
Such a swarm, earthquake experts warned, raised the short-term risk of a possible larger earthquake along the southern San Andreas or on adjacent faults in the area. That additional short-term risk would last for about a week.
While those seismic forces in the Salton Sea didn’t trigger a large quake, the earthquake warning prompted state and local authorities to be on higher alert and review best practices for how they should prepare and respond to such situations.
That included Los Angeles City Hall, where Mayor Eric Garcetti has made resiliency and disaster preparedness a top priority of his administration. Garcetti brought on on former U.S. Geological Survey seismologist Lucy Jones as his science adviser for seismic safety to help him craft policies to better prepare and protect the city.
With seismic risk, it can be difficult for public officials to make the case to take proactive measures for an event that may not happen during their tenure in office. But that hasn’t stopped Garcetti.
A year ago, Garcetti approved legislation sponsored by L.A. City Councilmember Gil Cedillo that has been hailed as the strongest municipal measure to mandate retrofits for seismically vulnerable structures, including so-called “soft story” buildings built before 1980 and others built with non-ductile reinforced concrete—about 15,000 buildings across the city. The new rules lay out timelines for when vulnerable buildings need to be retrofitted by.
“Together, we’re leading the nation in requiring this level of building safety retrofit before, not after, the big quake we know is coming,” Garcetti said in a statement.
Los Angeles has also pushed tougher seismic standards for cellphone towers with the hope of that telecommunications infrastructure remaining functional following a major quake.
L.A.’s future depends on the city’s ability to survive its next large earthquake. And the work being done by Garcetti and others in L.A.’s city government is making the nation’s second-largest city better prepared for a future—and unavoidable—seismic disaster. Route Fifty is pleased to name Garcetti and his team as Navigator Award finalists.
Michael Grass is Executive Editor of Government Executive’s Route Fifty and is based in Seattle.
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